Lazarus Rising
by KaiserKou
Summary: Like Lazarus of myth Commander Shepard is raised from the dead - only to find all his resources stripped from him and the galaxy on the brink of ultimate destruction. Can he trust those around him in the coming fight? Can he fight for the lost? They say it's a suicide mission. He intends to prove them wrong.
1. Lazarus Rising

Well, response to The First Kiss was overwhelmingly positive (:-D) so here we go: full novelisation of Mass Effect 2 &3 with flashbacks to Mass Effect (OG). We begin at the beginning of Mass Effect 2.

I hope you like it.

The theme song for this chapter is, unfortunately, not in English. The theme song is _När Vindarna Viskar mitt Namn_ (When Spirits are Calling my Name), by Roger Pontare. There's an English version but… it's crap.

Let's begin! But first, let's do something I've never done before: begin with a bible quote.

* * *

Chapter 1: Lazarus Rising

* * *

 _Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And the Lord lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me._

 _And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth!_

 _And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a shroud._

* * *

"Is that him?" Cell Director Miranda Lawson asked roughly as the steel crate with her mission objective inside of it was carried off the MSV Haros into shuttle bay 3 of Minuteman Station, a research facility headed by Cerberus hidden away in the far reaches of the Horsehead Nebula.

Around her were guards – Cerberus troops in ebony white armour and black, face-obscuring visors toting heavy assault rifles – and researchers and work-staff both, the entirety of the Lazarus Cell present for the true commencement of their mission. They almost looked military where they stood in ordered lines, in uniform and armour, her head of security in a black and white worksuit that accentuated his muscular and trim figure where he stood beside her. But none of them were military. None of them were even sanctioned under the Systems Alliance government. Most of the guards were convicts or dishonourably discharged renegades, all of the scientists were left off members of their faculties kicked out or disbarred. To a one the lot of them were criminals. But that didn't matter to Miranda, nor to her superiors.

Because they were Cerberus.

Some called them terrorists, remembering bombings and assassinations and sabotage performed at their hand against people hindering the "Human agenda" all over the galaxy. Their goal was singular, their ambition complete, their resolve unwavering:

The advancement of mankind in the galaxy, no matter the cost or the actions needed to be undertaken. All means were acceptable in the pursuit of their glory. And the greater the mountain of alien bones they had to climb over to reach their rightful place in the universe, the better. They would do anything for the cause.

Even bring back the dead.

"Looks like it" Jacob Taylor, former Alliance marine and Corsair and her current head of security and chief enforcer, answered her rough question as the four Cerberus operatives disguised as common freighter personal descended the ramp from the MSV Haros's rear quarters and bringing the metal container with them. It was a coffin, in more sense than one, and it certainly looked it, all steely sleek and long and broad to contain the corpse of a warrior locked in cryogenic stasis as not to deteriorate any more than it already had. Slowly the men carrying it brought it would onto the floor of the loading bay and set it down with an echoing thud before their boss.

Miranda Lawson was a beautiful woman, and she knew it. She knew quite a lot of things, for behind the façade of her near-angelic appearance lay a shrewd and calculating mind ruled by a conscience long since made icy cold and uncaring to the point of cruelty. Those who didn't know her presumed her nothing but surface with a slender but almost impossibly curvaceous body, long shining raven hair and bright blue eyes that promised sin and pleasure to those foolish enough to imagine things that were not there. But the men that had carried the body with them knew her, and so averted their eyes and scurried away like rats when she approached with sure steps, the heels of her full body cat suit clicking against the floor of the shuttle bay. They were scared, and rightly so.

Miranda Lawson was a beautiful woman. Beautiful, but terrifying, and deadlier than a Krogan on stimpacks. She punched a code into the pad on the side of the coffin after having it read her fingerprint, a four digit code: 1143. And with a hiss of equalising atmospheric pressure the metal lid of the coffin slid off to show a cryostasis pod with a polished glass surface covered by a thick white fabric.

"We finally got him away from the Shadow Broker, ma'am" one of the operatives that had captained the MSV Haros spoke with a tremble in his voice as she reached down and began to peel the shroud away from the surface of the stasis pod. "A Squidhead bitch- I mean an Asari helped us recover it. I hope it is to your specifications, ma'am". Of course he was a xenophobe, Miranda reflected as she uncovered the surface of the stasis pod to look upon the man within. Most people who joined Cerberus of their free will were. Only a select few, like herself, believed in the cause out of more altruistic reasons. Though her reasons for being in Cerberus were quite selfish in other respects, were they not?

She pulled the last edge of the white fabric away from the face of the glass pod to see… a man. Given how much she had heard, how much she had been impressed to believe, how much she had been working towards seeing this project through, it was actually a little disappointing. But then again, what had she been expecting? Burning eyes or eagle wings or a golden halo like the saints of the craven days of yore? Foolish notions, surely – yet he was far too normal for the legend he had built.

Within the pod lay the body of a man, dead for months now but preserved out of the hope for something greater. He was handsome enough, she supposed, in a military sort of way: his hair had been shaved close to his scalp, as had the follicle hair on his cheeks and chin, hair dark brown but not quite black. His face was rough, skin sunken in death lined in the weariness one often finds in soldiers thrown into wars they never had an inclination to fight but who had decided to keep on marching regardless, his facial structure symmetrical in the extreme with a nose that kept on the heavy prominence of his brow in an unbroken line, and his jawline razor sharp. His eyes, eyes she knew were an odd shade of deep green, were deeply set and even in death she could tell that they were used to staring down danger. Still he was just a man, a dead man – but she seemed to be the only one to see that.

She knew what he had done, of course. He had saved the Citadel, the cornerstone of galactic governance, and the Council of representatives from its most esteemed alien races, from an ancient evil come anew to purge the galaxy of all sentient life. He had defeated that living ship, Sovereign, the vanguard of their destruction and obliteration, at the cost of almost an entire human navy and hundreds of lives. And his former deeds were not so small either: the first human Spectre, the saviour of Elysium and a veteran of the Skyllian Blitz and the bloody retribution that followed, a leader of a diverse team of soldiers both human and alien that had travelled the galaxy hunting a rouge Spectre of his own order. He was a powerful Biotic, a leader by nature, a hero born… or that was what everyone kept telling Miranda.

But she knew that the actions of people should more be laid at the feet of their makers and their consequences rather than the people in question themselves. Most people served little function but as tools for others. She didn't care much for his legend. It was no doubt one part fabrication to two parts embellishment.

It just so happened to be that her superior, the Illusive Man, believed that he was the tool they needed to fight the ancient evil that was coming. Sovereign was a Reaper, a living ship capable of unimaginable destruction, and it was but one of many. More were coming, and he was the one they needed to save them.

Or so she was told.

"Bring him to the operations room" she ordered, and the people around her scurried to obey. "I want him scanned and prepped for examination within fifteen minutes. We've wasted too much time already".

"You heard the director!" Jacob barked needlessly as the workforce, escorted by guards ordered to shoot at even the most minor suspicions of treachery, hurried to obey her directives. "Move it, people".

And aside, more to herself than others, she spoke dourly as they took the coffin and the corpse away deeper into the station. "Bringing you back from the dead will be difficult, Commander Shepard. I hope you aren't wasting my time".

* * *

He was dead. He knew it.

There was nothing but darkness around John Shepard for… well, there was no time, was there? Last thing he remembered was being flung out of the burning ruins of his ship in a fierce explosion, his body spiralling away into the vacuum of space towards some nameless shell of a planet in the far and looming distance. Too late he had realised that a piece of shrapnel had gone through his protective barriers and pierced his armour by the neck, depressurising it quickly as he drifted away into the nothingness. He struggled at first, but it was useless. You can't fight a lack of oxygen, and you can't fight the absolute zero temperature of space, and in the end…

Darkness claimed him. There was no sense of time or consciousness or thought. Just nothing… but somehow he suddenly became aware of that emptiness. Was his brain booting up, or…? Well, he sure was no scientist or doctor, though he had training in battle field medicine and damage control of many kinds, so he had no idea what was happening. Was he… was he dead? He thought he was. After all that had happened he surely was. Was he going to hell? He was dead, but he was obviously still thinking, so maybe there was an afterlife after all. Was the emptiness, the loneliness… was that hell?

Then there was pain. A pain was blooming in back of his neck and began to spread throughout his body, and slowly but surely a low hum grew in his ears. Other sounds – shuffling feet, hurried but intangible voices, echoes of a sterile room, the bleeping of machines as they struggled to do… something. Damn it, his neck was hurting, and his face began to feel like it had been sand-blasted right off, rugged and worn and stinging. As the noise around him grew even more chaotic, more frantic, he struggled to open his eyes.

"There, on the monitor" a calm voice, a woman's voice, a strangely Australian voice, spoke through the chaos and the pain, indicating something distant with hurried disinterest. "Something is wrong". Shepard struggled to open his eyes and saw a grey bulkhead lined with piping, marked with Latin letters and numbers in tiny and red. A human Systems Alliance space station?

"He's reacting to outside stimuli" a significantly more distressed voice spoke, reading off data from a monitor in the way that panicked scientists often do, a male and ineffectual and weasel-y voice. "Showing an awareness of his surroundings". Shepard trailed his eyes around him, saw a robotic arm adapted for surgery and hazy white lights and disused shapes moving around him, every noise echoing brutally through his head. "Oh my God, Miranda – I think he's waking up!"

"Damn it, Wilson! He's not ready yet" that Australian woman spoke in the tone of a clerk who was about to have his last nine hours of work eradicated by a passing dickhead – extreme annoyance and frustration at her fortunes. "Give him the sedative!" And then she came into sight, leaning over him.

Ash?

No, it wasn't Ashely Williams, his Ash. He thought it was at first, his vision hazy and blurred and her dark hair seeming brown at first, but no, it was raven, jet black with the lustre of silk in sunshine, and her skin was not olive dark but pale, snowy white, eyes piercing blue and calculating as she stared down at him. She was wearing some sort of tight uniform, white and skin-tight, and the black symbol upon her collar, a jagged ring supported by gold chevrons, was familiar, somehow. It was bad, that symbol, but as a button was pushed and the pain went away he couldn't quite place it as drugs flooded his system.

He reached for her, wondering where he was, wondering what the hell was going on and where his ship and his people were, but she caught his ineffectual flailing with nary a look and gazed into his eyes. "Shepard – don't try to move" she urged softly as she forced his arm down to his chest. "Just lie still. Try to stay calm".

"Heartrate still climbing" that weasel spoke as his pain went away and things got… stranger, more… fluffy if that made any sense. "Brain activity is off the charts, biotic implants lighting up like a goddamn Christmas tree!" Another series of bleeps seemed to push everyone into a panic – everyone but that woman with the black hair and the icy blue eyes. "Stats pushing into the red zone! It's not working!"

She let go off his arm and disappeared from his sight. "Another dose" she ordered, his words razor sharp against the darkness that was closing in on Shepard. "Now!"

"Heart-rate dropping, stats falling back into the normal range" that man spoke distantly. "That was close. Too close. We almost lost him".

"I told you your estimates were off" that woman spoke again, voice echoing through the black. "Run the numbers again".

And with her voice echoing in his ears Shepard tumbled down into the darkness of unconsciousness and the horrid corridors of memory.

 _"Shepard!" It was Ashley Williams, his Ash, who shouted in near-panic as she thundered down the halls of the SSV Normandy in full armour missing only her helmet, a few strands of her dark, dark hair loose from the customary bun she had put it up in as she went. He knew she was approaching, but he stood by his locker by the main battery as she hurried closer despite the explosions around them and calmly if forcefully snapped the helmet of his armour into place._

 _"Distress beacon is ready to launch" he informed her as he turned around, a little island of momentary peace around them in the chaos. She too put on her helmet then, showing only her eyes, dark and utterly lovely, through her transparent visor._

 _"Will the Alliance get her in time?" She was forcing herself to adopt a military fashion then, all brusque and business, but he knew her. She was an amazing woman beneath the G.I Jane exterior, layered and complicated, and right now he could tell that she was scared. He needed to assure her. And, in a way, he needed to assure himself._

 _An explosion rocked the ship that made them stumble towards each other, and with nary a look he held her before he glanced over his shoulder and saw that the communicator in the main battery had shortened out. "The Alliance won't abandon us" he told her as he gauged the situation and found fires erupting around them, going for an extinguisher that stood by the lockers for emergencies like these. "We just need to hold on. Get everyone to the escape pods"._

 _He tossed the extinguisher to her and braced against a locker as the ship rocked again. "Joker's still in the cockpit – he won't abandon ship!" she replied as she too went about putting out fires in the battery. "I'm not leaving either!" Her voice, the hasty look over her shoulder; absolute loyalty… just like Kaidan, like Jenkins. He would not see her die like he had._

 _"I need you to get the crew on the evac shuttles" he went to her and jerked her arm to make her pay full attention to him. "I'll take care of Joker"._

 _"Commander-" she protested as he made his way away from her towards the upper parts of the ship._

 _"Ash" he looked to her, eyes piercing and flinty beneath his helmet's visor. "Go. Now"._

 _Reluctantly she nodded. "Aye aye, Skipper" she confirmed and darted away. Once she was out of sight down a hallway he stumbled about the battery, bracing himself against an overhang before he found the button that sounded the ship-wide evacuation alarm. It was time to abandon ship. With fires everywhere like that… the ship was done for. The Normandy, his Normandy, was going down – and there was nothing he could do to save her now. As the sound of evac shuttles launching came from deeper within the ship he bared his teeth and struck the nearest bulkhead in frustration. No, now was not the time for inaction. The captains of old Earth had gone down with their ships, but he was no captain. Not yet._

 _He was Commander Shepard, and this ship was his ship. The crew was his crew, his people. And he'd be damned if he was just going to stand by and let his people be laid low._

 _"Mayday, mayday! This is the SSV Normandy!" Jeff Moraeu, Joker, the best damn pilot in the galaxy, spoke over the loudspeakers, his words no doubt plugged into the intercom instead of the emergency transmission. "Sustaining heavy fire!" As Joker spoke Shepard rushed down the hallway from the battery and into the mess area, passing debris and the burning table at which they had used to have their meals, around the elevator to the cargo bay and the evac area and up the stairs towards the main deck and the CIC. A mass effect field barred his way, a field at which he activated his own Biotics and shouldered through in a haze of burning blue dark energy –_

 _Only to be struck still by the sight before him. The main deck of the Normandy had been blasted apart, chairs and shattered bulkheads and the galaxy map's shards hovering in the air, and the hull of the ship was all but gone, showing empty space, a distant planet, and the glare of a merciless sun and the apathy of uncaring stars beyond. He walked through the destruction, making sure he moved slowly and with one foot to the floor at all times as to ustilise the ships own mass as a makeshift gravitational body. If he hurried now he might lift off and be thrown into the vacuum that was killing the rest of his ship. He set his sight on the far end of the destruction, the shields and barriers keeping the cockpit in the distance safe glowing faintly blue, and made his way there. He could cry for the Normandy later. Right now he needed to take care of Joker._

 _In the end he passed the shields and began to hurry to the pilot's side where he was sitting frantically pounding buttons and making ineffectual manoeuvres in the pilot's chair, a rebreather safety helmet over his head. "Come on, Joker! We have to get out of here!" Shepard shouted at him._

 _"No!" came the defiant cry back as Joker pulled up the control of the portside thrusters and saw that they were out of commission. "I won't abandon the Normandy! I can still save her!"_

 _"The Normandy's lost" Shepard leant in over him and laid an arm around his brittle-bone disease struck shoulders. "Going down with the ship won't change that" he added and pointed to the destruction beyond the cockpit. Joker gave a look, and at the harrowing sight tears came into his eyes and he moved his hands way from the command console before him._

 _"Yeah, okay" he spoke then, defeated. "Help me up". But as they stood they looked out through the shattered hull and saw… a strange ship, unlike any Shepard had ever seen before, all rocky and ragged and the size of a very large cruiser, moving mercilessly towards them once again. "They're coming around for another attack!"_

 _And true to his words that alien ship fired again, hungry golden beams of energy lancing through the ruins of the Normandy for the misericorde strike. Grabbing Joker's arm rightly Shepard pulled at his pilot, near-carrying the cripple towards the last evac shuttle on board. He could feel something break, but he knew Joker would survive it. He would make sure of it._

 _"Watch the arm!" Joker protested as Shepard opened the doors of the shuttle and pushed him on, helping him settle down on a seat, standing in the opening of the shuttle as another explosion thundered through his ship. This one was bad, the killing blow, as more explosions followed and tore the ship clean apart. As the ruins of the Normandy heaved Shepard, not strapped down or secured, was thrown clear out of the shuttle and slammed into a far wall as the internal pressure of the cockpit equalised, and Joker emitted a terrified cry of "Commander!"_

 _No. Damn it, Joker couldn't reach the launching mechanism on his own, and the doors of the shuttle were still open but irrevocably unreachable for Shepard as he clung to the ruins of the cockpit with all the strength he could muster. He could perhaps charge at it with biotic strength – no, that demanded friction and a place to stand, and he had neither as he hung precariously from a small grip. What could he do? He looked around and saw the ejection button to launch the shuttle. If he pressed that, Joker would life. He himself would surely die, but his pilot, his people, would surely live._

 _His wry smile went unseen by Joker as the pilot beheld, horrified, his commander moving and slamming that button with extreme force. He screamed at him, begging him not to do this, as the doors slid shut before him and the shuttle launched, leaving only a single Spectre armoured in black amongst the burning ruins of the Normandy._

 _And then, Shepard, at last all alone and facing certain doom, was struck by one last explosive blast, shrapnel tearing through his armour as his already precarious grip was broken and he was thrown out into the void of space. He watched as the remnants of his ship, torn apart and mutilated, crashed by him towards the surface of that distant dark planet below, but then he felt the crack, heard the hiss as his armour broke, and struggled to lay his hands over the hole in his neck as the pressure within tried to equalise with the emptiness without._

 _He struggled for a while, but in the end…_

He had died.

And then he woke up.

For a moment there was peace as he blearily opened his eyes, his neck stiff and unresponsive, his limbs heavy and cumbersome as his senses slowly returned to him. That ceiling above him… it was the same ceiling marked with human letters that he had dreamt of before. Or had he remembered it? Everything was so hazy. It felt like his head was full of cotton as he looked around but saw nothing but blurry shapes, the sounds in his ears garbled as if they had been filled with water. But one sense didn't betray him. The room smelled of metal, recycled air freshened by a slight hint of citrus no doubt added by the carbon dioxide filters, and a heavy stench of antisepctic. Was he in the med-bay aboard the Normandy?

No, Dr Chakwas had always preferred her medbay to smell more like cinnamon than citrus. Said it reminded her of her childhood in Buckinghamshire when she treated Joker-

Joker.

The Normandy.

No.

No.

No!

He blinked to clear the haze from his eyes and struggled to sit up, his body not moving as easily as it once had. He had to save his ship, save his crew – or had he already done that? His memory was all a jumble as a rocking sensation brought him further to an awakened state, but he was lying in a medical slab and not a cradle. So what was happening…?

The room was obviously part of some sort of medical facility, Medi-gel dispensers lining one far wall while simple surgery robots, no doubt run by sophisticated VI programs, littered the room, and a few tables cluttered with medical supplies filled the floorspace that wasn't occupied by his slab. A locker in the far corner, a little out of place and opened to show shelves cleared of everything but a single gun – didn't they know that Alliance regulations prohibited the storing of weapons in such a flimsy manner and that weapons lockers shouldn't be left opened and unsupervised? Was this even an Alliance ship? He could tell they were in space – the artificial gravity that wrenched his stomach in that particular way informed him of that, but maybe this was a space station? Yes, it seemed that way. This was too roomy for a med-bay on a ship where no space was wasted, and it didn't have any advanced scanners or immediate treatment facilities for acute burns, fractures and gunshot wounds. A dedicated surgery and recovery room? You didn't see such things other than at planet-side hospitals and space station medical facilities… unless it was an Asari ship. But the human lettering everywhere and the way it was adapted for the slightly larger human build meant that-

That rocking sensation came again. Something was exploding in the distance. The Normandy?! No, there were no explosions in space. You couldn't hear them, and he heard these. A voice crackled out of unseen communicators. "Commander, are you awake?" it seemed to ask, but it was hard to tell. "Shepard, do you hear me? Get out of that bed now! This facility is under attack!"

Attack…? Where… No, that voice was familiar. Female, soft, musically Australian, but the only Australian woman he knew was that idiot Hannigan he had served with in Hammer Squad back in the 103rd, and the voice over the speakers didn't have quite the same brain-dead edge to it. People spoke with an Austrailian accent on Trident too, but it didn't have quite the looping edge of the Trident tongue. No, she was Earthborn, just like him – and she was saying that the station was under attack.

He forced himself to sit up and swung his legs over the side of the slab, grunting and baring his teeth as he did so. Everything hurt, like that time he had been captured by Batarian pirates while on patrol when he had beaten and kicked and shot until only a four months of recovery on Elysium could heal him. He hoped it wouldn't have the same outcome as that time. That had ended with him defending Elysium on his own against the raider menace. He was not going through that again.

The medal ceremonies afterwards were nothing short of endless. Damn, how he hated to stand on military formality.

"Shepard" that voice spoke again as he tried to stand and failed. His legs wouldn't obey him. Nothing in his body seemed to work as it should. His jaw felt out of place and his lungs hurt with every breath. No. He stumbled to his feet, his knees trembling and almost buckling beneath his weight as if he had never stood before. He would not be beaten. "Your scars aren't healed, but I need you to get moving. The station is under attack".

Was it absurdly cold in there? He looked around and noticed that he wasn't wearing anything but a medical gown, a thin shift that did nothing to hide the fact that his muscles, once hard and springy and beholden of graceful strength, now felt flabby and soft and slack. He needed some clothes, and if the station was under attack he needed a gun. He stood on trembling legs and took a few tentative steps towards the weapon's locker by the end of the room.

"There's a pistol in the locker on the other side of the room. Hurry!" the voice urged over the intercom as he made his way over to it, finding a spare uniform in the bottom of the locker that seemed to be based off the Alliance Navy fatigues but blue and black changed to white, black and orange. He knew that colour scheme, as well as that symbol on the collar of the uniform t-shirt that was too small for his wide shoulders, but his mind was all a jumble and he didn't have time to sort it out. Pulling on the trousers and the uniform shoes he reached for the firearm and picked it up, examining it.

He could almost hear his old drill sergeant shout at him as he showed them a gun just like it. " _This, maggots, is the M-3 Predator! Manufactured by those Turian shit-birds in the ERCS! Reliable, accurate sidearm for your limpy wanker wrists! Effective against armor; weak against shields and biotic barriers! So don't go shooting at some Squid-head Asari bitch with this thing, you goldbricking shitheads, unless you want to have your butt-ugly faces torn off and repurposed as a doyleys!_ "

Ah, Alliance Navy drill sergeants. The most volatile and inventive torturers in the entire galaxy. Good times, good times. That gun seemed to have been modified for a slot for some sort of heat sink. He had seen designs like these, but they weren't overly popular in his region of space. Or maybe they were now. For how long had he been out of commission?

"Shepard, you're in a med-bay, so there are no thermal clips around" said the voice over the loudspeaker. "You need to find some, and soon, if you don't want that pistol to overheat. I'm detecting several hacked mechs moving towards your position. They mean to kill you. You're still in an unstable condition, so refrain from using your biotics-"

Shepard tried to say something akin to "Not likely" or something snarky like that, but he couldn't get the words out. Nothing but grumbly noises and gargles made it out of his mouth, as if vocal cords had fallen asleep. How long had he been out of it? Days? A week?

No matter. He heard clanging and shuffling beyond the door of the surgery room, and so ducked in behind the slap on which he had awoken to take cover when the entrance slid open. LOKI mechs shuffled in, five of them with guns drawn, bipedal humanoid security robots designed for security detail and guard duty in locations where manpower was scarce or round-the-clock security was not an option. They too were painted orange, white and black, and that logo again – where had he seen it before? He had memories associated with that symbol, and they were all bad but hazy.

The machines seemed to have been programmed to kill him, for they opened fire as soon as they saw him moving, shuffling towards him in a loose standing formation. Rudimentary security robots like those often lacked advanced tactics protocols when employed in the civilian sector, and programming new combat doctrines into their brains often required a programmer with great battle experience. They seemed to lack that. Shepard could feel himself smirking as he watched them march towards him, the shots they fired missing him or bouncing off the surface of the slab. Question: What was the best thing when you went back into active service after shore leave?

Answer: Target practice.

He popped out of cover and fired thrice, his first two shot missing wide and striking the wall behind the machines while the third simply grazed one of their shins. No kinetic barriers or biotic shields, then? He could have taken them out with no trouble if his aim didn't waver so much. And damn it, he was starting to become aware of the fact that he was hungry. Gut-wrenchingly starving, to be precise.

He rose and fired five more times, managing to down one droid but only grazing the other four that slowly made their way towards him. He fired again, but the gun hissed and overload and he popped back into cover with a snarl of disgust as a projectile whistled over his head. If only he had a grenade or a – he slapped his forehead in frustration at his own thickness. He was a biotic. Why was he cowering like some combat engineer?

He shoved the gun, in its compacted form, into his pocket so that it jutted out of it but wasn't in the way while it cooled down and then hunkered down, crouching at the edge of the cover, focusing just so like his BCR – Biotic Combat and Recognisance – instructor had taught him at boot camp over Juipiter's moon Titan. Dark energy gathered around his hands, though it was different from before: it seemed less stable now, but much more powerful. It was draining though, and with him being as weak as he already was he had to finish this quickly.

Gathering energy around his arms and legs he leapt out of cover and sprinted at the mechs, his speed augmented by that biotic energy to a greater extent than ever before, slamming into the two droids in the front of the formation and knocking them backwards before he struck at a third before it could fire.

His fists surrounded by swirling blue he hit it square in the plated chest, the barrier energy keeping his hand from shattering like the robot's breastplate before it was slammed into the far wall, exploding in a delayed suicide explosion protocol. He was nearly hit by a shot from the last one before he went low, dodging it's shots before he ripped the gun out of its metal hand and then hurled it by its feet into some no doubt incredibly expensive medical equipment with a mighty crash.

Using that stolen gun, and the heat-sink thermal clips within, he finished off the last two with three shots to the visor from a safe distance before he left out the door through which they had attacked him, leaving the operations' room in flames and shattered chaos. He discarded that overheated gun with a contemptuous scoff and a careless throw as he made it into the next room – a prep room with observation deck dominating one upper wall of it. If he have had the time and an Omni-tool he could've overloaded the firing battery and energy source of that pistol and made it into a makeshift grenade. But he had neither. He just had to rely on thermal clipped guns, his biotics and cover to keep himself from getting killed. He had neither armour, heavy weaponry, kinetic barriers, a squad, support or even a damn shirt.

But he was only facing droids, so that was quite alright.

"Someone's hacking station security – trying to kill you" the voice of that woman came over the intercom as he took down another three mechs with their sights trained on him, taking out the rearmost one with a shot through the visor that made it explode and launch the other two within range of his biotic charge. "You obviously care nothing for my medical advice" she seemed a little peeved despite the static that made some of her words intelligible. "But try to k – Biotics to a minim – ".

"Ugh" he had to say that having a gentle Australian voice guide him through this hell as he smashed through the mechs on their way through him in the next room did reduce the shock of waking up in the middle of a droid uprising with no idea of where he was or what he was doing there. But the tutorialising she seemed to indulge in as she directed him through the rooms using security cameras and intercom feeds was more than a little patronising. He was an N7 operative. More than that, he was one of the best hand-to-hand fighters alive in the Alliance Navy right now-

Unless he had been out of it for a hundred years or something. Who knew what might have happened since the Normandy blew up. And thinking of that made him grip the stock of his gun tighter as he stumbled past a small open office occupied only by one ornery dead man and two crippled mechs. The dead man had gun in his hand and a hole through his head that had splattered blood all over his computer terminal, but the terminal itself was whole and undamaged and active to boot. Shepard made his way over to it, looking for answers.

He looked through the files on that orange screen, looking for anything to shed light on these recent events. But it seems it had gone through an automatic wipe and only a few files of little consequence remained, and with that voice over the intercom urging him on he only had time to glance through a single document before he was forced to hurry on as not to get horrendously killed. It was a locale assessment, but one of many files in a folder marked "Lazarus – resources".

 _Lazarus Station, previously called Edge of Horizon, is perfect for our purposes. As the project's scope expands with the reconstruction and recruitment of former Alliance resources and personal for Project Lazarus Minuteman Station has become quite crowded. Lazarus Station is much more obscure, much smaller, and much, much harder to find. On Cell Director Lawson's orders we moved the Subject there along with any and all resources needed to bring him back to life. It's been a year into the project already, but no one seems to care that we've gone over budget as we are having results. We have done, are doing, the impossible. Lazarus is rising from the grave._

What the hell…?

Shepard shook his head to clear it as he went out of that office and continued to make his way down the corridors of the station at the directions of that Australian woman. He saw one living person once, on the other side of a heavy sheet of bulletproof glass that blocked out his screaming as a slough of LOKI mechs reduced him to mincemeat by the shots of their pistols before firing impotently at the glass on the other side of which Shepard was standing. He cursed at the sight of that dying man before he went on. He couldn't save the dead, and revenge was needless for those he did not know. The only thing he could do was find someone in charge – maybe that woman speaking over the intercom – and try to get everyone else off the station.

Now, if he could just find some damn armour or maybe a shotgun –

A hiss of static and a garbled message from that woman over the station loudspeakers made it sort of sound like she was heading to meet him, but then nothing. No more. He was lost in the middle of that lonely station with a whole mass of security drones closing in on him and with no idea of where to go. But he wasn't one to lay down and give up. He survived. He carried on.

He was a soldier, and it was what he did.

Through one room, pressing on blindly, he went, the two droids in it dispatched swiftly with a strategic biotic charge and a subsequent hail of shots. He seemed to have new implants, as his biotics moved differently… if that made any sort of sense. Things beyond his control, lifts and pulls and throws, didn't seem to work as well as they used to, a lot more strain from him required to form any sort of biotic fields even as much as half a yard from his body. But that seemed to be countered by the raw strength provided by them, especially at close range, especially when he channelled his biotics around his limbs to augment his speed and strength and his physical barriers. That biotic charge technique had been almost impossible to pull off with his old implants, but with his new ones he could do one every odd minute with little adverse effect and no more than normal cool-down measures. And, quite frankly, he had never been good with pushing and pulling and throwing with his powers, or erecting barriers off his body to make stasis attacks or expanded shields. This suited him a lot better.

High risk, high reward, and keep on charging while your squad picks up the pieces after you: that was his combat doctrine. And with these new implants he was nothing short of devastating in it.

Through one door he came into a large empty mess hall, but unfortunately for him there were no food in the bins or even energy bars in the cupboards he rifled through. Cursing at his growling stomach and the metabloistic requirements of biotics he went the only way left to him: forwards. He pressed on through the doors at the far side of the mess hall and –

Finally he saw an actual living human being.

A gallery lay before him, a central atrium that went through all the five levels of the station, and on the top level they occupied a walkway connected their level to the other side across a five story drop. On the middle of the walkway, taking cover from some mechs shooting up from the level just below, crouched a man in a slick black jumpsuit uniform, his body trained to physical perfection that was leaner than Shepard's had ever been. He looked up when the opposing door slid open, gun at the ready, but his dark eyes widened when he saw that it wasn't more droids coming for his proverbial bacon. "Shepard? What the hell-!" he was interrupted and crouched down behind a row of ornamental benches when the mechs below opened fire in massed force. "Dammit!"

Shepard dashed to his side, sliding in behind the same cover as the man. "Sitrep" he barked at the stranger man as they ducked under the fire of the machines. "Stat!"

"What are you doing here?" the other man answered, more surprised than anything, not answering that military order. "I thought you were still a work in progress!"

"Are you with the Aussie woman who keeps bossing me around over the com?" Shepard barked back, not wanting to be kept in the dark a second longer than he had to.

"Miranda? Yeah! Sorry, I forgot this is all pretty new to you-" a piece of the cover protecting them was blasted off with a stray shot, making both of them curse. "I'm Jacob Taylor. I've been stationed here since-" another piece of the ornamental metal benches crumbled and hit him over the shaved head, making him curse. "Hold on a sec!" he urged, stood, shot one mech through the visor from across the chasm and then lifting it up with a biotic flash, holding it close to the others when its self-destruct protocols kicked in.

"There!" he panted as the LOKI mechs scattered, knocked down, and picked themselves up off the floor in shuffling struggle. "Things must be worse than I thought if Miranda's got you running around! I'll fill you in, but we better get you to a shuttle first!"

"I know this isn't the best time" his words came out roughly but they did come out as if Shepard was getting used to talking again "but I'm sick of stumbling around without knowing what's going on!" He held the man down with a steely grip before he could pop back out of cover to shoot.

"Fair enough" said the other fellow through teeth clenched shut. "I'll give you the quick version: you and your ship were attacked and destroyed. You were killed. Dead as dead can be when they brought you here. Our scientists spent the last two years putting you back together. You've been comatose, or worse, that whole time. Welcome back to your life, Commander".

Shit. So that was what was going on. Some assholes with the money – and the technology – to remake him had brought him back from the dead and now someone wanted them to stop being such dicks… or whatever. Who were these idiots? "This doesn't look like an Alliance facility".

"It isn't" he gruffed back, to which Shepard scowled. "I can't say much more than that for now. The Alliance officially declared you killed in action. The whole galaxy thinks you're dead. If we don't get to those evac shuttles-"

"Were there any other survivors besides me from the Normandy?" he pressed, interrupting the man.

"I'll tell you what: you help me finish off these mechs, and I'll play twenty questions with you all day once we're out of here! Deal?!" came the snap back at him, to which Shepard smirked. Well, that seemed fair. And the man seemed to be a biotic of the standard Alliance persuasion; that is, not very imaginative with his techniques. Maybe it was time to put him through school.

"Watch and learn, soldier!" he spoke before he leapt out of cover and charged the railing of the walkway, barechested and dazed from his rude awakening, screaming bloody murder.

"Commander!" the security officer cried after him, but it was too late. In a blaze of blue biotic fury Shepard leapt from the walkway and descended on the mechs on the balcony below, shots grazing his shins and his upper arm but offering little pain to slow him down. He slammed into the floor and exploded his barriers outwards at the same time as he rolled and drew his pistol, coming up close to the remaining three mechs, sending one into the others with a might kick to the chest piece and blasting the heads off the other two. "Holy shit!" the man cried excitably as he leant over the railing, looking at the dazed and exhausted Shepard below who was struggling to remain standing.

"Ever seen a Krogan airdrop?" he called back up him before his legs gave out and he sank to the floor and promptly fell asleep, unconscious, exhausted.

 _"Shepard" Wrex rumbled from where he was hunkering down side by side with Shepard as they took cover from Geth forces firing volley after volley at them amongst the ruins of Ilos. They had pushed through from the landing site from the MAKO in among the crumbling spires of the Prothean civilisation that had come aeons before theirs, Shepard and Wrex leading the charge, Liara, Ashley and Tali taking the centre and Garrus in the rear with his sniper rifle and itchy trigger finger. Once Ashley would have kept the rear guard of the formation with him, the two delivering death from a distance while Kaidan would have kept guard over the two most fragile combatants in their squad, but… Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko was dead in the smoking ruins of Virmire._

 _And they had followed Saren to Ilos to make him pay for the death of their comrade._

 _"Wrex" Shepard replied testily, speaking through his teeth as he hunkered down. They were posed on a balcony overlooking a large open area that Liara, from the middle of the formation some fifty yards back alongside Ash and Tali insisted was an old plaza or mercantile area or something. She was very enthusiastic about fighting through the ruins of Ilos, much to the appreciation of the energetic Tali and the annoyance of the cynical Ashley. "Garrus!" he snapped over the com. "Can you please take some of these blinky flashlights out?! We're sitting with our asses hanging out here!"_

 _"It's a bad angle, Shepard!" came the shout back, and Shepard cursed again. They had stumbled onto a massed formation of Geth, and as their squad had next to no stealth capabilities – he really needed to get that fixed for when this mission was over – every single Geth in the closest square mile were alerted to their presence. Now, from that ruined plaza below they fired constantly, supressing their movements and essentially locking them down. "You've got more flashlights coming in! Three o'clock!" And now they were charging up the ramp to his right, too, the direction from which he had no cover. Great. Absolutely fantastic._

 _"Shepard" Wrex insisted again as the same man kept cursing and surveying the field of battle as best he could from his narrow vantage point. If they charged down the ramp, maybe – "Shepard"._

 _"Wrex" he snapped back, trying to think strategically. If they went down the ramp he and Wrex could clear the way for the others… but then all the fire would be on Tali and Liara, the ones with the least armour and least offensive capabilities in the entire squad. If only he or Wrex did they wouldn't have that problem, but the one sent down would get pasteurised by the charging Geth. And if they stayed where they were they'd be attacked from the flank, and then all of them would be joining Kaidan for a drink or five at the celestial titty bar under the approving eye of God. "Anyone got any grenades?!"_

 _"No, Commander!" Tali called back, tending to a big hole in Liara's midriff suffered when a stray plasma bolt went through her when her barriers were down. "Neither Liara nor I have any left!"_

 _"Shepard" Wrex insisted from the side, but Shepard knew that the Krogan didn't have any explosives on him._

 _"Wrex" he warned and turned back to his squad._

 _"Copy what the rust-bucket said, Skipper!" Ash called from her perch behind Tali and Liara, managing a little suppressive fire from time to time but mostly not as the Geth bombardment was too heavy._

 _"Shepard" Wrex probed again, and now he was actually starting to get on the Commander's nerves._

 _"Wrex" he snapped back again before he kept running down the situation. "Garrus?" The Turian agent answered in the negative, having used all his up when they disembarked from the MAKO almost half an hour earlier. "How're you hanging in there, Liara?" Could they move her? Fall back? He was the only one with any Medi-gel and the one with any skill with medicine over her and Tali. If they couldn't fall back –_

 _"The architectural symmetry here is fascinating" the Asari scientist spoke back, feverish and rambling and very much high as a kite from the painkillers Tali had flooded her body with. "The foundations are clearly from the Mastaban period of Prothean development, but the main structure up ahead is significantly newer. The city must have been inhabited for almost five thousand years! Fascinating!" Well, that was a 'no' on moving Liara anytime soon._

 _"Shepard" Wrex pressed from the side again as the Commander tried to figure out what they hell they were supposed to do now. "Shepard". Maybe if they radioed Joker and had him rain down some suppressive artillery on the rear of the Geth formation, or if they could get Garrus to go back to the MAKO and – "Shepard!"_

 _"What?!" he roared at Wrex, staring the millennia old Krogan right in the eye. "What the hell do you want, Wrex?!"_

 _To which the Krogan began to chuckle. "Ever seen a Krogan airdrop, Shepard?"_

 _Oh, no. That was the same tone of voice the Krogan had used that time on Feros before he had Kaidan set fire to him and then charged straight into a massed throng of Thorian creepers, burning and screaming bloody murder. "Wrex" he cursed – well, he said that name like a curse – as the Krogan battlemaster stood from out of cover and began to mass his biotics while firing blindly into the Geth formation below. "Wrex! Don't do anything stupid-!"_

 _"_ Korbal _!" Wrex roared and charged, leaping over the railing of the overpass and down onto the plaza below, landing smack dap in the middle of a Geth platoon, laughing like a madman all the while._

 _"By the Goddess, did he just-?" Liara asked._

 _"What the-?" Ashley wondered breathlessly._

 _"_ Pedica mea _!" Garrus cursed._

 _"_ Keelah _, you mad fool!" Tali shouted after Wrex._

 _"Oh, shit" Shepard cursed and stood, firing after Wrex, honestly not caring very much if he hit the Krogan or not. But things were as they were, and with the Geth below shocked and in complete disarray under the mad charge of the crazy Krogan he was not one to let a chance like this go. "Garrus! You and Liara take this perch, give Wrex some suppressive fire! Ash, Tali – you two, with me!"_

 _"Aye aye, Skipper!" Ashley affirmed as she and Tali formed up beside Shepard, the human woman with an assault rifle and the Commander and the Quarian mechanic with their trusty custom shotguns aimed at the Geth that were charging up the ramp towards them. "Are we-?"_

 _"Yes, we are, Ash!" Shepard barked back and pressed the butt of his shotgun to his shoulder, biotics swirling fiercely around his legs. "Come on!" he took a deep breath and roared with all his might. "Charge!"_

 _"Bloody_ bosh'tet _!" Tali cursed almost like a human now as she followed along the two that came thundering down the ramp towards the approaching Geth formation. "Oh well" she gave in to the general mood and brought up the explosive function on her Omni-tool. "_ Keelah se'lai _, you stinky flashlights!"_

 _Meanwhile, down on the plaza, fighting off a horde of Geth, Urdnot Wrex was having the time of his life. "_ Rann Tuchankna _!" he roared and smashed one battle platform apart with a single swing of his mighty arm as Shepard, Ash and Tali fought their way down the ramp to join him in what he considered to be the festivities. "Come on, you pieces of future scrap-metal!"_

 _"Does Tali even know what a 'flashlight' really is?" Liara wondered as she supported the endeavours of the Krogan with a few well-placed Biotic explosions and singularities, holding one hand to her midriff at all times._

 _"Do you?" Garrus asked as he took aim at one enemy in the far rear of the formation. "Because I have no idea. I just heard it from the human xenophobe after Virmire"._

 _"Bite me, Garrus!" Ashley cursed as she laid low a Geth rocket trooper with a few well aimed shots as they stepped off onto a ledge in the ramp as it curved down towards the plaza._

 _"Does it matter?" Tali said as she made one Geth do an impression of Quarian line dancing while another kept shooting at its feet using nothing but her hacking skills. "As long as I get to kick the_ bosh'tet _in the quad-"_

 _"It's all the same, yes?" Liara commented in a daze as she lifted another Geth – a prime, one of the biggest bipedal combat platforms there were, one of four that had thundered into plaza to help the lesser platforms deal with the sudden influx of Krogan they had experienced – using her considerable biotic skill as Tali's medical ministrations began to have an effect. Suspending it in the air she then used a throw ability on it, sending it crashing into a ruined wall and no doubt breaking some priceless historic artefact as both wall and Geth were shattered in a rise of dust. "Tali'Zorah, I've a question about Quarian linguistics-"_

 _"Can it wait for another time?!" Shepard barked as his cleared the ramp of smaller Geth platforms with a strategic biotic strike and push along with his shotgun that raged and threatened to overheat in his hands. "Just focus on staying alive first!"_

 _"You call this a challenge?!" a battered and bleeding Wrex roared as he charged a Geth prime head on, barrelling into the massive red robotic combat platform and pulling its legs out from under it before he jumped on its neck and ripped its head clean off. "Hah! Come on, Geth! Who's your daddy?" He used that Geth prime's head to crush two infantry platforms against a ruin wall as he shouted. "Who's your daddy?! Tell them, Turian!"_

 _"I'm your daddy" the Turian spoke smugly and downed another Prime with a shot that went perfectly through its flashlight optics, through its flash-drive datacore and out the back of its head after having sabotaged its shields with an overloading protocol._

 _"I'm surrounded by mad people!" Ashley complained in a mocking tone as she grinningly kicked down a particularly persistent Geth and placed one foot on its chest, emptying her entire thermal clip's heat-sink capacity into its optics. Despite her grumblings to the contrary she was having the time of her life._

 _Despite the hardships they all were._

Shepard blinked, dazed and confused, as a limping man in black pulled him to his feet, his dark skin glistening with sweat in a way the commander had to admit was nearly hypnotising. He was back on that station, Lazarus station, but there didn't seem to be any mechs around just now – possibly because he had crushed a small platoon of them in a mad biotic charge. Was he insane as well as dead? His judgement seemed impaired… "You are completely crazy, commander" the soldier supported him by shouldering his weight as they moved further into the station.

"Sorry" Shepard muttered back, and the man seemed surprised that he was coherent enough to form proper words. "I'm not… as durable… as I used… to be. Are you hurt…?"

"Just sprained my ankle jumping after you onto level four" came the ready but indignantly vexed response as they made their way down a hallway on level four. "The name's Jacob Taylor-"

"Yeah, you said that, didn't you?" Shepard wondered back as they snuck around a corner, supporting each other with each of them with a pistol in one hand in case of them running into any more kill-crazy machines. "Sorry. Kind of flew over my head with everything going on…"

"Figured as much" Jacob confirmed with a nod. "You've just woken up from whatever coma you were in, and then you push your biotics to the max. You haven't even eaten in two years!"

"Yeah, about that" Shepard tried to stand on his own, but his head swam and his neck hurt much too much, and he grunted and settled back into Jacob's support. "You said they spent two years rebuilding me. How bad were my injuries?"

"Dead as dead can be, sir" Jacob repeated as they went through another door, only to find two mechs advancing on them which the two took out in tandem with perfectly timed shots. "At least at first. Then… I'm no doctor, but it was bad. When I first saw you were almost nothing but meat and tubes. Anywhere else they would've put you back in the coffin – but project Lazarus was different. Cutting-edge technology".

"Whaddya mean ´cutting-edge´?" Shepard pushed, wondering with a chill in his heart if… no, not that, that would be like something out of one of the old Earth science fiction novels. He was himself… wasn't he? "Cloning? Cybernetics?"

"I don't know the details and I never asked, but I'm pretty sure you're not a clone" he replied, looking up and down the hallway before they went through another door. "You'd have to ask the scientists, but I'm pretty sure the whole point of the project was that you weren't a clone. They wanted to bring you back just like you were, and here you are. You might have a few extra bits and pieces, though".

"Were there other test subjects?" Shepard wondered, his concerns alleviated but certainly not forgotten.

"No. Project Lazarus only had one subject, sir – you. The whole point was to bring you back". They stopped before a hatch in the floor in one of the offices in the following hallway, Jacob rattling away at his Omni-tool and so opening the hatch, granting access to the service tunnels. "Just you. Even that was a challenge. Two years. All the top scientists. Best technology money could buy. More money than I have ever seen in my life".

"Where're we going?" Shepard wondered as they dropped down into the service tunnels, moving tenderly due to their injuries.

"Through the service tunnels, to climate control. Wilson, the chief medical tech, contacted me while you were out. Said he was in the network control room, keeping tabs on the mechs for us. We should be bypassing most of the damn things through here".

"What's your job here, Jacob?" Shepard wondered about this strange man, this obviously military man who was working for someone who was "definitely not Alliance".

"Technically I'm Miranda's top lieutenant and chief of security… but I'm just a soldier. I served five years in the Alliance before this. Now I'm running the station's security. Usually a lot more dull than this".

"Can you tell me anything about what's going on?" Shepard, figuring as the man was head of security, questioned then, knowing that he had no doubt had some idea of what was happening. "Why are we under attack? Why are the mechs trying to kill me?"

"I was trying to get some shut-eye, then – bam! Bunch of explosions! Next thing I know every damn mech in the place starts shooting, at us! I'm guessing it had to be an inside job. You need top security access to hack all the mechs". Jacob, as far as Shepard could tell, was a simple man with simple needs, though he sensed a hidden depth to him – otherwise he wouldn't have kept calling him 'sir'. He certainly wasn't 'unburdened by complexities of life', as Dr Chakwas once had described Ensign Jenkins before his death.

And then, when he ducked under a water pipe as they made their way through a low point in the tunnels, a thought occurred to him, the source of that nagging horror that had been burrowing at him. "The last thing I remember is the Normandy blowing up. Did anyone else make it?"

"Just about everybody survived" came the answer, accompanied by a heavy wave of relief so profound that it almost made Shepard want to cry. Thank whatever powers ruled the chaos of the universe, this was what he needed to head! But, of course, there was some sort of caveat, as fate had long since made him its bitch. "A few servicemen from the lower decks didn't get out. Navigator Presley was killed by an explosion. But everyone else, including the non-Alliance crew: the Asari, Liara, the Quarian, the Krogan… they all made it out alive".

"Do you know what anyone of them are doing now?" eager to know Shepard pressed Jacob. "Do you know what happened to Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams?" He needed to know what had happened to Ash. He needed to know that she was safe.

"I don't know, sir. It's been two years. They've moved on, left the Alliance as far as I know. Could be anywhere". But despite that vagueness Shepard was glad. At least they were alive, and if they were alive he could bring them close to him again. If they knew he was alive they would come back. He was sure of it.

"When I first woke up someone named Miranda was talking to me over the radio" he then said, leading Jacob onto the trail of revealing more about his superior, the one who had been in charge of things as far as he could tell. "I lost contact with her just before I stumbled onto you".

"Miranda Lawson's the station's ranking officer. She lead the Lazarus" he stopped an instant, as if censoring his words "team. It was her job to bring you back to life, no matter what. Should've guessed she tried to save you. She's not about to give up on you now. You said you lost contact, sir – could you tell what was happening?"

"Some gunfire and explosions" Shepard shook his head as they went low under a jutting bar "and then a whole lot of static and nothing. Didn't sound too good".

"She knows how to take care of herself" Jacob went, sure of himself and the words he was espousing, but a tender hint came into his voice as he went on "but I hope she's okay". Was there a hint of intimacy in that tone? Fraternisation within the ranks – but this wasn't an Alliance outfit, so maybe that was alright with them. "It was a pretty crazy stunt you pulled back there, Commander" he then spoke, to which Shepard looked at him. "I've never seen anyone use biotics quite like that".

"A Krogan taught me" Shepard shrugged, neglecting to mention that the quick approach, known as the Rush technique, and the strength augmentation, known as Smash, were two techniques for advanced Biotic use taught to a select few in the Alliance Navy: more specifically, they were taught to 'Slayer' type operatives training in the ICT academy in Rio de Janeiro back on Earth. Shepard might have well been the first to combine the techniques into something he called the Biotic Charge, as it took a lot out of a person to perform it, but he doubted that he would be the last. A small subset of soldiers in the Alliance Navy had begun training almost exclusively in using their biotic powers to augment their physical strength and close quarter combat capabilities, and humans, as they said, are crafty creatures.

"Must have been one hell of a Krogan" Jacob whistled softly as they rounded a corner in the tunnels, the sound of whirring fans indicating that they were getting closer to their destination.

"Most of them are" was the only answer he gave to that. He admired the Krogan, always had since first meeting one who took issue with a Batarian slaver back when he was just a raw recruit going on patrols in the Skyllian Verge. And then working with Wrex… the lizard beast was mad as a hatter on peyote compared to the average human when in active combat, but when out of it he was reserved, mountainous, and old. Centuries old. Shepard had counted, and some of the things Wrex had seen and told about had occurred as early as in the equivalent of the Earth year 693 CE, which was meeting, and fighting, the first Spectre. That was the same year as when, on Earth, archbishop Sisebert of Toledo rebelled against king Ergica of the Visigoths in Spain, and the same year as Earconwald the saint had died and been entombed in London. To live such a span of time, unmatched even by the Asari, and to see so many things… Wrex was knowledgeable and wise beyond ken to most people. And his battlefield advice was impeccable.

"Can't argue with that, sir" Jacob confirmed, and Shepard's assessment of the man was confirmed a little more as they went, him remarking not, being a man of simple ambitions and direct ways. Of course, directness was good, but… one needed to be able to dream.

They came up onto the end of the tunnel and climbed up another hatch just beyond some fans that circulated citrus air all throughout the station, only to emerge into a small office on the edge of what Jacob referred to as the B-wing. Going through a door marked Network Control they expected to find a friendly face – but the room was littered with LOKI mechs and the bodies of dead researchers and station staff, the sight making Jacob's face harden. He sloughed off Shepard and proceeded to dispatch the murderous machines with extreme prejudice, urging the commander to stay in the corner. In the tight quarters and the poor lighting of the room his biotics trumped their aiming, and in short he turned to Shepard, another wound in his arm that hadn't been there before but still alive, limping over to him to pick him up off the floor – when a voice other than theirs could be heard groaning.

"Wilson!" Jacob cried and moved to bald, bearded, dubious-looking man who was leaning against a battered console clutching his leg, groaning with pain as he did. A pistol, recently fired, lay by his side, and it looked like he had been shot while in a last and desperate attempt for a final stand for survival.

"Jacob! Shepard!" the grunt came in return, the weasel-y but still gruff voice somehow familiar to Shepard's ears. "Bastards got me in the leg!"

"See if you can find some Medi gel for this scratch in that locker over there" Jacob, keeping his hands pressed over Wilson's thigh to stifle the bleeding, barked at Shepard, who nodded dazedly and then turned to stumble at the direction and the locker indicated. It contained three spherical Medi-gel canisters and single combat-standard stim-pack filled with distressingly azure liquid, and the locker beside it kept another black-orange-white uniform, this one actually in his size. He shrugged the shirt of it over his head to give himself at least a little more cover before he shot himself in the arm with the stim-pack and then pocketed the canisters, keeping one of them in his hand as he went back to Wilson.

Wilson was in the middle of arguing with Jacob as Shepard began to treat his wound, acting as if he and Jacob often did things such as these. "We have to find Miranda" Jacob said as he slattered some Medi-gel, handed to him by Shepard, over his ankle where it would stiffen into a makeshift cast and then reduce and stall any swelling. "We can't leave her behind!"

"Forget about Miranda!" Wilson shot back fiercely… a little too fiercely. He obviously didn't care for her or her leadership – was he the deviation from the norm, or was Jacob? "She was in D-wing. The mechs were all over that sector. No way she survived".

"A few shoddy mechs won't drop Miranda" Jacob spoke with conviction, as if from experience. Was she that skilled? Perhaps theirs was a meritocratic organisation… Shepard couldn't wait to see her and finally find out what all of this was about.

"Then where is she?" Wilson questioned as Shepard applied first aid using the Medi-gel he had collected, his fingers going about the familiar task with practiced ease despite the slackness of his muscles. "Why haven't we heard from her? There's only two possible explanations: either she's dead, or she's the traitor!"

A small man with a small mind, Shepard reflected as he laid the finishing touches to the treatment of Wilson's wounds. Things were rarely that clear-cut as one side or the other, all the way black or all the way white. Most of the galaxy was just one big haze of grey. "Then why did she wake me up?" he soundly poked holes in that reasoning with a level voice.

"Okay" Wilson admitted as Shepard helped him to his feet, leg treated and now at least not bleeding. "So maybe she's not the traitor. But that doesn't chance the facts: we're here and she's not! We need to save ourselves! The shuttle bay is only a few-"

The door by the far end of the room slid open with a hiss and in poured a group of mechs, as if summoned by fate itself just as things were starting to look better for them. Wilson vaulted into cover and howled in pain when supporting himself on his wounded leg while Shepard rolled back and Jacob took the front position, trying to hold the mechs back while the Commander waited for his meagre strength to return-

Under the fire of the mechs Shepard surveyed the room, spotting the fact that one of the downed people that had been one of Jacob's friends had a whole and functional Omni-tool strapped to her forearm in the form of an integrated metal vambrace. He dashed for it, the stimpack he had taken kicking in and making his thoughts and body race at a kickstarted speed while a distant nausea filled him, every detail of the room growing sharper to his darting eyes. He peeled that Omni-tool of the dead woman's arm, hating the fact that he was disgracing the dead but knowing that in a situation such as this he needed to seize every advantage offered and ride them for as long as he could.

With the Omni-tool strapped to his arm and his biotics blazing bright with renewed energy Shepard cocked his pistol fiercely and rushed out of cover, slamming one mech aside with biotic force and shooting three others, putting Jacob out of a tight spot before he noticed that the last droid was standing over Wilson, its gun pointed at his head. Shepard didn't even know the man – but that didn't matter. He rushed the machine and impaled it with his arm, making it crumble to the side before he, panting all the while, relaxed his biotics and offered Wilson his hand.

"Damn, Shepard" Wilson grumbled as Shepard once again helped him to his feet. "Never thought that you would save my life. Guess that makes us even!" Was he one of the scientists that had brought him back to life? Shepard wondered about it as they separated and looked to the chief of security.

"Okay" Jacob panted and holstered his pistol while Shepard prodded at the ill-fitting vambrace and the Omni-tool integrated into it. "We took them down" he looked to Wilson before his eyes fixed gravely at Shepard "but this is getting tense. If I tell you who we work for, Shepard – will you trust me?"

"This really isn't the time, Jacob" Wilson protested, and Shepard's dislike for the man grew even more. That scientist seemed to act like one of those types who would never lay on the barbed wire for another person, or maybe do so only after he had been offered a million credits. No, he hated working with people like that – and Jacob seemed like a good sort.

"We won't make it if he's expecting a shot in the back!" he snapped at Wilson, who seemed to want to protest further but then withdrew his objections, no matter what they may have been.

"If you wanna piss off the boss, it's your ass – Jacob" Wilson grumbled back and settled back at that stack of crates that had been his cover before. That wound in his leg… it was on the inside of his thigh, angled as to only give a superficial mark that looked very dangerous and near-fatal but actually was anything but. It really was very strange, all of it…

"The Lazarus project, the Lazarus Cell" Jacob turned to Shepard with a hesitant but serious tone. "It's funded and controlled by Cerberus".

At first Shepard thought that he was mishearing. Cerberus… that was where the logo was from that was everywhere on that damn station. But he hadn't misheard, and he had seen that logo before. While on the hunt for Saren he had been contacted by Admiral Hackett, his technical commander-in-chief, and sent to investigate a situation on Luna, Earth's moon. And there: a rouge outfit of terrorist scientists had given rise to an AI meant to control the Geth, but it had failed spectacularly and gone insane, slaughtering the lot of them. Another time he had stumbled over a station on some nameless backwater of a planet, far into the depths of the Voyager Cluster, while chasing after body of Rear-Admiral Kohaku, where he had found Husks, Throian Creepers, Rachni drones – all experiments to create disposable ground troops. The bodies piled up outside of that facility was more than enough to show Shepard the true colours of that organisation – no matter the face Jacob put up.

"Told you" Wilson drawled when the two men beheld Shepard's expression of mixed horror, anger and disgust. "Shepard, Cerberus has spent a fortune putting you back together. At least-"

"After we get to the shuttle, I'm off and out" Shepard nearly snarled at them, hostility burning in his eyes. "I don't care what you say or do – I'm not working with terrorists!"

"I'll take you to our boss" Jacob said as Shepard turned away. "You can tell that to him… but after you've saved our butts from the mechs. Come on" he pushed past Shepard and made for the door. "The shuttle bay's through here. I'll show you the way".

"You're taking him to the Illusive Man?" Wilson questioned almost indignantly as they went out that door, following Jacob's sure stride. "If the bitch's alive – if! – she won't be happy about that. No sir'ee".

"I'll take my chances" Jacob shot back. "Miranda and I go way back". Shepard picked up on the doubt in his voice, as if he didn't fully trust his own kept beliefs. Who the hell was this woman?

Down two corridors and facing only little resistance they went, blasting their way free and making their way quickly towards the loading bay. Despite the company, despite the fact that they were Cerberus, Shepard had to admit that it was good to have some people at his back at last, and though he couldn't count on them… it was still good to have reinforcements. Jacob motioned them inside smaller chamber on their way, deviating slightly from their objective.

The Cerberus armoury was all but empty, no armour at all in its shelves and only spare pieces of pistols and firearms lining the walls. No doubt many of the other people on the station had been through there and pillaged it already, leaving it all but empty, but tossing aside a crate full of thermal clips he uncovered something that made him smile.

"Finally" he muttered, picking up the hidden and perhaps even cast-aside grenade launcher. "A proper weapon at last".

"Most of the arsenal and armoury we've prepared for you is on the other Lazarus facility, Minuteman Station" Jacob commented as they exited the armoury, him leading the way towards the shuttle bay that lay beyond the loading bay in the A-wing of Lazarus Station. He and Wilson conversed in angry and hushed tones as they went, bickering as if to assign blame upon one or the other, until Shepard barked that he trusted neither of them and that they could assign blame when their asses were out of the fire.

They made it to the large air-locked doors of to the laoding bay just in time, having fought their way past another group of murderous machine mechs with Shepard hanging back in order to spare use of the grenade launcher's use in case they needed to take down something big or especially problematic. And, as they often were, his instincts proved to be right on the money.

As they dashed into the loading bay, the grenade launcher heavy in Shepard's hands, they came across a dreadful sight – about a dozen LOKI mechs standing about the central hub of the termination protocol that had made them want to slaughter everything in sight, protecting their rouge programming. It just so happened to be that the central directive of that programming was emitted via local frequencies by nothing less than an YMIR mech.

In the ancient days of old Scandinavia, when the winter winds would howl beyond the doors of the longhalls of the Viking chiefs, the people who lived in those harsh times would gather and trade stories with each other – about the world, about fortune and plunder and wonders yet unseen, and about their gods. Loki, Odin, Thor, Freyr – these were the ones most well-known, the ones worshiped the farthest. But Loki was naught but a trickster in most stories, Freyr a randy sod of a boar, Thor rageful and intemperate, and Odin as dark, looming and all-judging like death. And so one god now forgotten in the later days of spaceflight was the primordial one, the ancient titan, the great giant from whose flesh the world itself had been built – Ymir, the old one, the first of the giants and their dark Allfather.

Likewise the Ymir mechs towered over all, even battle tanks and MAKOs, standing close to twenty feet high and built to withstand immense punishment. One arm of it was a dual mass accelerator cannon, a great advancement but maintained the same function over the more primitive Gatling guns, the other was a rocket-launcher of such force the entire contraption had to stop moving in order to fire it, and its self-destruct protocols had been upgraded to provide a blast with the force of 0.012 metric tonnes of TNT. It loomed in the cargo bay, vast and imposing over the other mechs, and Shepard cursed upon seeing it, as did Jacob. Great minds seemed to think alike. Wilson, in comparison, did nothing but stop and stare and whimper helplessly.

"Jacob, you HO certified?" Shepard snapped to his intrepid companion, who nodded. Not all military personal that went through the Alliance recruitment system were ever given training with heavy ordinance, but luckily enough Jacob had trained in the Utopia system relay boot camp and so nodded. "Grab this!" Shepard then urged and tossed him the grenade launcher, pulling himself and the terrified Wilson forwards and into cover while Jacob limped back and took a position. Soon the machines began to open fire on the nearest targets, who happened to be –

"They're shooting at us!" Wilson whined as the selfsame machines opened fire and bombarded the crates they were cowering behind with bolts of raging light and matter.

"Comes with the job" Shepard went, noting that the YMIR mech seemed to do little. Doubtlessly it had been programmed to stand back and only attack when it needed to defend itself, supporting his hypothesis that the machine was broadcasting the termination command to the other mechs on the station. It had a lot more processing power than the LOKI mechs, that was granted – but if they killed it then they took out the other mechs. He cracked his head to the side, the stimpack he had taken before making everything edgy and jagged as his blood burned with artificial adrenalin. It was time to make some scrap-metal. "Jacob, on my mark you pepper that fat dick with grenades. Wilson, you and I wear down its shields. Got it?"

"Aye aye, sir" Jacob was falling back into the life of the marine that he had given up a little more than two years earlier, and he was enjoying it immensely despite the danger to life and limb.

"Are you crazy?!" Wilson protested, and Shepard's jaw muscles played beneath his skin as he bit his teeth hard together. He could not afford to be second-guessed by his own men, regardless of their quality. If the soldiers started talking back then all of them would be dead come morning – that's how it usually went.

"If you want to get out of here alive, you'll do as I say, Wilson" Shepard grunted at the man, who promptly shut up and settled back down, clenching his pistol in his shaking hands. "I need you to be brave, Wilson. I need you to draw the YMIR's fire and overload its shields while I make sure we don't get stomped into paste. I need you to transfer an overload protocol to my Omni-tool and put it on immediate use on touch. Can you do all that?"

"I- I think so" the man nodded and licked his lips, to which Shepard laid a heavy but supporting hand upon his shoulder.

"Good man. Run that protocol" Shepard wasn't a techie or any good with hacking beyond the terminal interface stuff, despite having been bypassing terminals and the like in the hundreds while chasing after Saren. He seemed to lack the patience needed of a combat engineer, but most of the time that suited him just fine. But it was good to use whatever you had on hand, and after Wilson programmed his Omni-tool to overload shields on kinetic contact Shepard nodded. "Now" he thought back to major Kirrahe on Virmire and wondered where that Salarian was at now "hold the line, got it?"

"Got it" Wilson nodded as Shepard gathered his biotic powers about him, hoping his new amps could take the strain. If this was to work he needed to execute two charges in quick succession, and he wasn't sure if he could do it. The stimpack was wearing off and the adrenalin rush would soon be over, and by then he'd have one hell of a headache and possibly fall unconscious again. He needed to get this done fast. It was kill or be killed, and he had only one shot at pulling this off.

He had certainly been in worse situations.

"Over here, you incontinent tin-cans!" he shouted and jumped out of cover, dashing across the loading bay with biotic enhanced speed, the machines firing at him as he drew their attention away from Wilson and Jacob. "Wilson!"

"Take this!" the man shouted as his Omni-tool blinked alive and he began to hack into the functions of the main mech, its kinetic barriers crackling as he began to gain access to its protective systems. As one the LOKI mechs turned and opened fire along with the YMIR at him, but he crouched down behind cover and was not hit, keeping it up. Shepard, in the meanwhile, now forgotten by the murderous machines, charged again, smacking aside a few humanoid combat platforms before he slammed into the side of the machine Omni-tool first. The overload protocol short-circuited the wrist mounted computer and made his arm numb as it was inadecuately shielded, but it did its work, and in a crackle the YMIR twitched as its shields were overloaded and then failed.

"Jacob!" Shepard cried as he darted away, all of the mechs now focusing their fire on him. "Now!"

"Aye aye, sir!" came the immediate response as the Cerberus operative popped out of cover and began to empty the barrel of the grenade launcher right into the body of that mech, his teeth bared and sweat pouring down his brow as he fired, again and again. As the explosive canisters rammed into the midriff of the great robot, knocking it backwards but not quite off its mechanical feet, Shepard threw himself behind cover, shrapnel flying over his head as he did. The machine staggered and was battered and broken, the explosions crippling its guns and rendering one of its legs unusable, but… it still stood, whirring furiously, and the grenade launcher in Jacob's hands clicked almost spitefully. "Out of canisters, sir!"

"Damn it!" Shepard hissed as he rose from out of cover as the LOKI mechs began to fire on Wilson and Jacob once again, assessing the situation. A little gunfire from M-3 pistols wasn't going to take that damn thing down, and it could still clomp over to them and stomp them into mush or maybe even activate its self-destruct protocol, blowing them all to bits. It was damaged enough to supersede its broadcasting protocol, after all. Damn it, there wasn't-

 _Who's your daddy?!_ , Wrex roared in his memories, causing Shepard to grin. When all else failed and you were out of options the best thing one could do was charge. It threw the enemy off balance and made you regain the high ground and the option of deciding the outcome of the battle. Often such a final charge was suicidal, but…

Everyone had to die sometime.

And according to Jacob he had already died.

" _Korbal_!" he shouted as he did his best impression of the Krogan battlemaster and leapt over the crates behind which he had cowered, hitting the floor in a biotically enhanced stride, his vision blurring over and his stomach heaving as his head burned under the strain of using so much, so soon. But if Wrex had done it then so could he.

In a running leap he struck the leg of the YMIR mech and jumped, using it as a springboard to launch him high into the air. Soaring high above the mech he raised his fist and struck down as he fell, the giant robot barely having time to react before his hand went through its head as the blow landed. Opening his barriered fingers he instantly ripped out its central processor and tore it clean from its head, cutting short all protocols as he held it into the air of the hangar with a victorious shout. Soon the other, smaller mechs deactivated, standing stock still as the YMIR's corpse sloughed to the ground and hit the floor with a mighty crashing thud.

"Damn, Commander!" Jacob said while he and Wilson approached the stumbling Commander who was reeling from the shock of his own attack as he stepped off the now scrap-metal husk. "Wearing down its shields with electric shocks, shattering its armour and its offensive capabilities with heavy ordinance before taking it down with biotics – remind me not to piss you off!"

"Glad you appreciate it, Jacob" he answered in a pant, hoping all of this was over soon. "Let's get out of this damn place-"

"Come on!" Wilson said and dashed for the door leading to the evac shuttles, hurriedly fiddling with the door locks to make it open. "We're almost at the-" and then the door slid open, and a great many things happened all at once. Wilson took a harsh intake of breath, as if to scream, before a gun was drawn and flashed dangerously in the gloom of the hallway. A single shot was fired, going straight to his head, and Shepard only had time to pull out his own gun by the time Wilson's body slumped limply to the floor, blood pooling by their feet. Shepard looked into that doorway –

And a pair of icy blue eyes narrowed as they stared back at him.

* * *

And scene!

 **A/N** : Shepard in story is Male, Earthborn, a War Hero and Vanguard, Paragon focused and, if didn't catch it, romanced Ashley in Mass Effect. Thought unrealistic for him to pick up armour and weapons seconds after he woke up. Had him stumble around Lazarus Station in his pants before getting his bearings. Hope you lot don't mind. Doing best Mordin Solus impression in preparation for writing said Salarian's dialogue. Doing very poorly.

Haros: the name of the ship that carries Commander Shepard's corpse to Miranda's care. The modern Greek name of Charon. Ferryman of the dead. In classical Greek mythology ferries people past Cerberus. Also, in love with line "Behold the Cerberus!" Need to work into the story, somehow.

Karin Chakwas, M. D., from Buckinghamshire, England – like her voice actress from the games. Got to love that Buckingham Mercian accent. Such refinery, much civility, many awesome. Gives massive dialectal stiffy. Funny thing: the Buckinghamshire motto is _Vestigia nulla retorsum_ , which translates to _We do not retreat_ … sort of. Or _No turning back_. Awesome, yes?

Garrus curses in Latin. Turian society was conceptualised off of ancient Rome by Bioware. Seemed appropriate. He says something… this fic is rated T, so can't say. The cry Wrex spouts is _Rann Tuchankna_. Imagine means something like "For Tuchanka" or "Blood for Tuchanka" or "Death _to_ Tuchanka" or even "F*** Tuchanka". The guy doesn't like his homeworld very much in the original Mass Effect. Exploration of Krogan language and culture, acceptable?

Lastly, in normal writing: I don't see why Bioware named the YMIR mechs what they did. I mean, Ymir does nothing but get killed and drink milk in the old myths. Maybe it's because I was raised on those old stories, but I would have gone with Tyr, god of tactics, or Vidar, god of vengeance, or even Forseti, god of judges and justice. Guess they didn't think those names were as catchy. Oh, well.

Next chapter, _An Illusive Man_ , will be out as soon as I can write it. The college semester is starting, so I might not have as much time as during the summer to write. Anyway:

Read and Review, and DFTBA!

UPDATE: Since the fic is now M-rated, I can tell you what Garrus says in Latin: Literally, he says "Fuck me up the ass!", but it should rather be used as the expression of dismay that is the "Fuck me!" one expresses at a point of panic.


	2. An Illusive Man

Alright, next chapter, coming up! Not very much to say now, but the afternote is extensive and more than makes up for it.

The theme for this chapter is _Tonight we Ride_ by Unleash the Archers.

* * *

Chapter 2: An Illusive Man

* * *

"What the hell are you doing?!" Jacob exclaimed, reeling backwards but not lifting his gun as he recognised the woman on the far side of the door way at whom Shepard drew his own weapon.

"My job" she answered coldly and lowered her own gun. "Wilson betrayed us all". She looked to Shepard again, her eyes narrowing once more as she looked him up and down, seeing his clothes and weaponry and not being very surprised. "Commander Shepard. So you did make it all the way here. I was monitoring your progress until I was forced to" she shot a disgusted look at the dead man "multitask".

"You should have taken him alive" Shepard shot back, not lowering the gun, keeping it steadily pointing at her head until… what the hell was she wearing? "This your idea of due process? Even if he was your traitor, did he deserve that welcome?" She _was_ wearing a white cat-suit, reinforced with thicker black over the shoulders and arms and integrated black boots over the shins and feet, but other than that it was pure white and seemingly plastic mesh, fitting her skin so snugly on her amply curved body that it must have been impossible to move. But move she did, and gracefully so, as she turned her cold blue eyes at Shepard and laid her head slightly to the side.

"He sabotaged the security system, killed my staff, and he would have killed us". So she was Miranda. She looked familiar… had he seen her when he woke up during his coma-or-whatever-it-was? And her Australian accent, so rare in this day and age – except for that damn stupid Hannigan who had used to tag him in the back all the time with her shotgun back in Hammer Squad – it must have been she who had woken him up and kept him alive.

"You sure about that, Miranda?" Jacob questioned even as her gaze was fixed on Shepard, examining him, appraising his appearance and the weakened paleness of his face from being understandably dead. "We worked with Wilson for years. What if you are wrong?"

"I'm never wrong" her gaze shot to Jacob for an instant before settling back on Shepard. "I'd thought you had learnt that by now, Jacob". Her hair was long. Shepard reacted immediately to that, as it was a rare sight in that day and age. All Alliance military officers were required to keep their hair short or in shortening buns to fit it beneath their helmets, and most people in the civilian sector had gone along with that fashion with all the exposure Alliance marines and navymen had gotten in the media during the thirty years since Shanxi and the First Contact War. But she wore her hair long, long and silky and black as sinful midnights, wavy down to her upper back, and it was… remarkable.

"You really think Wilson's capable of that?" Jacob went, his tone subdued as he went to Shepard and silently urging him to lower his weapon.

"Not anymore". She narrowed her eyes again, at Shepard's pistol this time. "Commander, this is getting ridiculous. I am Miranda Lawson, director of the Lazarus Project, and I am intending on taking you out of here to see my boss".

"The Illusive Man?" he didn't even consider going along with the wishes of those two and kept the barrels of his M-3 levelled at her head, ready to shoot at even the slightest hint of threatening movement. "I know you work for Cerberus".

"Jacob" Miranda admonished half-heartedly, though she didn't seem to be surprised. "Your conscience got the best of you again, I see. You really should have gotten rid of it by now".

"Lying to the Commander isn't going to get him to join our cause" Jacob defended his actions in an almost subdued manner, but she had more pressing matters on her mind.

"Lying and not telling the truth are not the same things, Taylor. Well, since we are getting everything out in the open now, could we have this discussion aboard the shuttle out of here? And could you please lower your pistol, Commander? I will answer any questions you have with complete honesty". She didn't even bother to hide the fact that she was obviously lying, Shepard reflected.

"I've had enough of this station for a lifetime" he grudgingly admitted as he lowered the gun to his side, knowing that they all needed each other for now and so could not afford to shoot each other just for the fun of it all.

"Or two, in your case. We are the only survivors left on this station according to my scans. Come on" she jerked her head at the shuttle doors.

"Convenient that you show up as we are leaving" Shepard questioned her timing as she opened the doors to that shuttle and showed him and Jacob in with little ceremony, closing the airlocked doors after them before she headed for the commanding console and pilot's chair, taking the helm by both. "Where were you during the attack?"

"Besides saving your life?" she mused without even a shred of amusement as she activated launching protocol and headed the shuttle for the hangar doors while Shepard and Jacob strapped themselves into the hard seats, the shuttle a repurposed and repainted Alliance Kodiak that was intimately familiar to the both of them. "Wilson figured out I was helping you and sent an army of mechs to take me out. You and Jacob dealt with the stragglers – I crushed the main force. I got to you as soon as I could". As the shuttle began speeding through the mass effect field blocking the hangar entrance and out into the starry void of space the faintest of smiles curved her lips ever so slightly. "Probably a little too soon if you'd ask Wilson".

"It's about three hours with shuttle to the relay, then another for blueshift and the way to Minuteman" Jacob said as he went to the far couches in the corner and rummaged around into one of the retractable compartments. "There should be some… aha! Jackpot!" In triumph he pulled out a heavy box of protein energy bars flavoured either chocolate or strawberry or both, showing it to the two other biotics as Miranda punched in the auto-pilot and then went to take a seat on the shuttle couch opposite where Shepard had slid down. All of them were biotics, so no one batted an eye when they all took a couple of bars each from the packet and downed them quickly. To Shepard's dry and battered throat and unyielding and stiff tongue there had nothing that tasted as sweet, and he kept on eating even when Miranda and Jacob were finished and they set about doing their job – which was taking care of him, it seemed.

"Your body is not rejecting the implants. Good" Miranda noted as she scanned him over with her Omni-tool, scowling at the data she got as Shepard happily munched away and Jacob handed him a bottle of water out of some hidden compartment. "And that's the only thing that's even in the same star system as 'good'. Your vitals are out of bounds, your heart-rate is in the yellow, and… did you take a stim-pack?"

"It was either that or have Wilson and Jacob shoulder all my weight" Shepard commented and sipped the water that was luke-warm, stale, tasted of plastic –and lay as gentle as the nectar of the gods upon his tongue. "Did I turn all of the stats in the red or something?"

"Nearly" her frown deepened. "But with rest and a proper diet and regular exercise your body should return to its original state… more or less. It's not your physical condition that worries me. It's your mental state. Your new biotic amps were not fully integrated with your skull before you started to rage about the station. We need to run some tests-"

"Come on, Miranda, don't you think the guy's had enough excitement for today?" Jacob questioned.

"Before you meet with the Illusive Man we need to ask a few questions to evaluate your condition" Miranda thoroughly ignored Jacob. "It's been two years since the attack. The Illusive Man needs to know that Shepard's mental faculties and personality are intact".

"Yeah, sure. Ask your questions" Shepard gruffed as he clutched his head, the stimpack wearing off and his physical state suddenly feeling very, very poor. "Just get over it quickly. If I'm stuck with you lot I'd like a bit of shut-eye before seeing your boss".

"Of course, Commander" she remarked as she activated her Omni-tool's datapad function and began to cycle through the standardised questions they had prepared for this very occasion. "You were born on Earth into poverty, with no record of your family. You enlisted into the Alliance navy at age eighteen" he smirked every so slightly at that, but she dismissed it as the antics of a confused man and Jacob didn't notice. "You earned much commendation fighting Batarians during the Skyllian blitz. You remember that, Commander?"

"Elysium?" He'd rather not think on it. Those were days of blood and fire, and the memory of them still shook him awake at times, sweating and panting and wondering when the next Batarian charge might end his life or when the bombs would start falling again, but everyone else didn't see the smoke of Elysium burning or the soot that was all the remnants of the dead left behind in a broken city. "I did what I have to do to stay alive and keep as many people as I could out of the hands of the slavers. That's all it was".

"Your dossier does mention that you tend towards needless humility" Miranda noted and punched some data into her files.

"Whatever you say it was damn impressive, sir" Jacob commented from aside.

"Your service history says that you partook in the counter-attack on Torfan" Miranda went onto the next question. "You had an altercation with one Major Kyle. Can you remember what it was about?"

"Kyle… Rider Kyle? Leader of the ground assault after Major Styles was injured and shipped off to the medics? Yeah". He remembered it well, that day only four years into his military service when he had been told to do the unthinkable. "Major Kyle told me to lead a squad down into a Batarian bunker complex and eliminate all resistance by any means necessary. Going down into that pit was suicide. I'd lose three fourths of my men on a meaningless charge. I punched him in the jaw and placed my troops around the entrances, starving the hostiles out instead. They tried to court-martial me for it, but Admiral Hackett had my back and had Kyle dishonourably discharged for his bloodthirsty orders".

"You saved a lot of people's lives, Commander. I had friends who were there". Jacob looked then to his director and boss with flinty eyes. "Satisfied, Miranda?"

"Almost. Let's try something more recent". So his memories seemed to be whole and his recollection unmarred by his death. Good. It was time to see if his moral compass had strayed after the shock of dying and then being resurrected. "Virmire, where you destroyed Saren's cloning facility: you had to leave one of your squad behind to die in the blast. Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko was killed in action. It was your call. Why did you leave him behind?"

Kaidan… Ashley was the one of them with any experience in a command position, so he had her running with Kirrahe, the Salarian STG commander they had run in to on Virmire. It made sense, as she could best correlate and coordinate their actions while Shepard laid the rear assault and Kaidan was stuck on bomb-duty. And saving her made sense too, as saving her meant saving the Salarian operatives too. The ruthless arithmetic of war… no, those were just hollow justifications he made to himself. "I let a friend die that day, and I didn't do it casually… but I had to save as many people as I could. Kaidan gave his life for the rest of the team. He died a hero". Which, he did not doubt, was no consolation to the _victorious_ dead. "Without him, I couldn't have stopped Saren".

"I understand, Commander" Miranda nodded as she noted his reply in her data. "You did what you had to do to win that day. No one at Cerberus would begrudge your decision". He flinched at that, as she had expected, but it was important that he saw his own actions in the same light as theirs to make him more sympathetic to their cause and more pliable to the Illusive Man's suggestions. "Shepard, think back on the Citadel, after the Alliance saved the Destiny Ascension and the Council from Saren and the Reaper, Sovereign. What happened next?"

"Humanity was offered a spot on the Citadel Council. I recommended Captain Anderson, whom I served with and knew for a long time, for the position. He's a good man, stalwart in his principles, and I could think of no better man for the job".

"Yes" Miranda noted. "Captain Anderson is now Councillor Anderson… though I hear he preferred life in the military to politics".

"Still, it's good to know that the human representative on the Council isn't going to put politics ahead of defence" Jacob commented, to which Shepard made an internal note about Jacob having some conviction in the Cerberus xenophobic agenda. Defence against aliens was the only kind of defence one could prioritise when on the Council, and Shepard would much rather have a representative that would be there to vouchsafe peace, understanding and scientific and cultural achievement in cooperation with the other species. Well, he wasn't going to argue politics, not when he was that tired and dizzy and suddenly nauseous. "Is that enough, Miranda?" Jacob questioned his superior.

"I suppose it will have to do" Miranda, on her own hand, could tell that Shepard was bone weary and needed his rest. "You just rest, Commander. We'll look after you". He shot her a long look. He trusted her just about as far as he could throw her, and in his current state he judged that he was about as physically capable as a Salarian dying from old age, but… he was very tired, and nature took its course.

"Sure" he gruffed back at the two of them as he settled back against the corner of the shuttle, leaving the two to converse as he soon fell into a dreamless sleep. Hours seemed to pass in an instant, just like when he was dead, until he was awoken with bleary eyes when the shuttle doors opened and they were greeted by an entire battalion of a Cerberus escort. Half asleep and barely able to stand Jacob shouldered his weight as they exited the shuttle, most of the people expressing joy at Jacob's survival but kept a cold fear and healthy distance from Miranda.

"Report" she looked to one researcher who followed her along with Jacob and Shepard as the former Alliance soldier carried the Commander through the lofty metal halls of Minuteman Station, the main and much larger but also much easier to find Lazarus Cell facility. "How many people did we lose?"

"Thirty-one people, director Lawson, as we received kill-signals from all. Only you three and a… Wilson? – were unaccounted for" came the rapt reply by the smaller woman who was looking through her Omni-tool data.

"Wilson's dead" Miranda went with a nod as she showed Shepard and Jacob down a long corridor going down one wing of the station that seemed to be hardly inhabited though meticulously cleaned and maintained.

"Oh… I'm sad to hear that, ma'am" came the answer insincerely before she went to the next topic. "Ma'am, as your personnel officer I'm required to inform you that engineer Donnelly, who was recruited for phase two of the project, have been spreading rumours about Collectors being behind the disappearances of human colonies – and that they are working with the Reapers".

"He's not saying anything that isn't true" Jacob commented from beside the sleepy and barely conscious but still listening Commander.

"He isn't – but an operative who talks and spreads our secrets around is a poor operative" Miranda noted until they came to a fork in the road and stopped, turning to Jacob. "Take Shepard down to hallway seventeen and his cabin. The Illusive Man is busy according to the coms chatter, so we'll wake him when we need him".

"Aye aye" Jacob nodded and did as he was bid like the good little soldier he was, and Shepard wondered if there was anything more to him than that as he was helped down another hallway and then into a small suite to the right, a room dominated by a bed, a small table and a few chairs and a door leading to a rudimentary bathroom – a customary crew cabin of an Alliance space station. Cerberus must have built it after Alliance designs or bought it or otherwise acquired it from the Alliance. How deep pockets did these people have? "Get some shut-eye, Commander" Jacob gave his advice in a firm tone. "The Illusive Man will want to speak with you soon, but you need your rest. We'll be monitoring your vitals while you're out of commission".

"You're a good man, Jacob" Shepard noted and settled down on the corner of the bed with a grunt at his aching muscles.

"Sir…?"

"You're a good man, but I think you're with a bad crowd" he qualified at the former marine, who swallowed and looked away, turning his back on the Commander and heading for the door. He stopped in the doorway, and his final words were so quiet that Shepard almost thought he had imagined them.

"I think so too sometimes, sir" Jacob said before he left the room, leaving Shepard alone with his thoughts. Given the time in silence he examined the temporary cabin he had been given, looking for hidden weapons and bugs planted to spy on him. Of the former he found none, of the later he found many, one hidden in the frame of that picture framed and hanging on the far and otherwise spartan wall…

As he stared at its frozen wastes and icy spires rising from a black and uncaring rock he couldn't help but remember one such place he had gone to, long ago, before he was Commander Shepard, before Saren and the Normandy, before all of it. So long ago…

 _"Shepard!" Carmine snapped her fingers in front of his face, trying to get him to wake up before she threw subtlety to hell and shoved him hard over the armoured shoulder. "Shepard, wake up!"_

 _"We're approaching the LZ, newbie" said Berger, sitting on the other side of the shuttle bench to Shepard's left while Carmine and Ryder were sitting to the right, the rest of hammer squad sitting directly opposite them with Chandra in the middle and Hannigan and Takaeda on the flanks. All of them were armoured in black and blue, their suites marked with the N7 logo. Shepard's was the newest member of their squad, and at the age of twenty three also the youngest. The year was 2179, and they were approaching their mission objective on the planet Jarla, a small frozen rock of a place in the arse-end of the Skyllian Verge._

 _"You should've woken me sooner" he complained and dragged his hand over his eyes as the rest of the team readied their weapons and checked their equipment one last time before they went in for the assault on the pirate base. In response to his grumbling Carmine winked at him._

 _"Don't be such a butter buster, newbie" she drawled with a chuckle, to which he grinned back. She was hot – he had to give her that, as young as he was – with stalwart and bright eyes and dark hair cut short at the nape of her neck. He had just been stationed aboard the SSV Everest a week earlier, and this was his first mission with the Assault Directive of the 103_ _rd_ _Marine regiment, so his mind was a little jumbled from all the recent changes. One week he had been graduating N7 training out of ICT in Rio on Earth, the next he was surrounded by strangers on classified missions. Well, sort of classified. When the other directives screwed up their missions they called the Assault Directive for backup, and of all the nine squads in the AD the Hammer Squad was the most brutal. And granted his service record Lieutenant Shepard's attachment to Hammer Squad was all but a forgone conclusion. "Nerves of steel, though. Sleeping before your first op with the 103_ _rd_ _– now I've seen everything!"_

 _"Not so, ma'am" he shook his head at the second in command of the squad and reached for his helmet, showing it onto his head until it connected to the rest of his armour with a click, and then grasped for his shotgun. "Since Elysium the sound of explosions always lull me to sleep!"_

 _"Hah!" she enjoyed his jest and showed it by slapping him fondly over the back of the helmet as she stood and put her helmet on too. "Hammer squad! Line up!" she barked as the first in command and her immediate superior entered the back of the shuttle as they formed up in two lines after seniority, Shepard being the last._

 _"Listen up, you maggots!" Major Briana Campbell had served some time as a drill sergeant on Arcturus Station's fort, and the experience showed in her constant cursing and barking and ordering them about despite the fact that even Corporal Chandra, the second shortest person in the squad, towered several inches over her as she posed herself before them, assault rifle in hand. "The Bats're all crawling over this sector like fangirls over Shepard-"_

 _"Hey!" he protested to the amusement of the rest of the squad, the Major rolling her cybernetics-enhanced red eyes beneath the screen of her visor._

 _"Zip it, Ajax!" That was his call sign, as Carmine's was Siren, Chandra's was Kaboom, Berger's was Blades, Ryder's was Smiles, Tekaeda's was Hellfire and Hannigan's was Rodeo. The Major herself, in an instant of profound ironic humour given her tiny stature compared to the others, went by the name Titan. "Okay, shit-heads – here's the sit-rep! At eleven hundred hours this morning a frigate was shot down three klicks out of the LZ! The Bats promptly scooped them up and the crew's in hostile custody! Apparently they were sitting on some vital intel that could make the four-eyed freaks declare war on the Alliance – and if we let any of that intel escape this facility we can shove our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye!"_

 _"They're just Bats, ma'am" Chandra protested from his little corner of the formation. "We beat them on Elysium and Torfan. The fight's beaten out of them. We're fighting pirates, not military!"_

 _"Shut your pie-hole, Chandra, before I fill it with my fist! Ever heard about the sleeping goddamned giant? No? Well, I damn well thought so! Now keep that dick-socket shut before you embarrass yourself further! We come in from the south, breach the bastards and kick their scaly asses back to Khar'shan! Attack formation Alessia!" Suddenly an explosion rocked the shuttle and sent all of them scrambling to stay upright. "Dammit, Carsen!" Campbell shouted into her earpiece at their shuttle pilot. "Where the hell did you learn to steer?!"_

 _"LZ's hot, Major!" came the shout back over the intercom. "Taking fire! Bats're tagging us good!" Two other shuttles were flying interference along with Hammer Squad's, softening up the pirates' artillery so that their landing assault could become all the more impactful._

 _"Not as good as I tagged your mom last night, Carsen!" she snapped back before she looked to her squad. "Okay, change of plans! We go in hot, attack formation Fraustadt while Ajax and Hellfire does what they do best! Come on! Let's show those scaly sons of bitches who owns this galaxy! Earth Ascendant!"_

 _"What's the time?!" Carmine barked at the rest of the squad, to which they, as one, lifted their guns and raised their voices._

 _"Hammer time!"_

Shepard shook off his remembrances as he looked away from that planet, and headed for his bed. That moon, Jarla, had looked just like that, all ice and gravel, and the blood had flown in what had felt like rivers that night and seeped through the cracks of the planetary surface to strike icy veins far beneath that killing rock. There had been nearly a hundred hostile pirates at that stronghold, but none of them escaped for the shuttles that were attempting to leave were run aground by the Alliance war machines from the air. They had fewer people, but they had air superiority and the initiative, and in the end all but three Batarians were killed that night.

No one had counted the kills or confirmed them. They were Special Forces and their operations were classified anyway. It was enough for the admirals who directed them to know that the target had been eliminated with extreme prejudice.

Those days it had been simple, though, despite the gruesomeness of their work. Clear orders, clear mission objective, clear directives and an established chain of command to go through if you hadn't a clue of what to do. None of this Spectre or Cerberus ambiguity. It was nice being beholden only to yourself, of course it was, but when the faecal matter hit the carbon dioxide scrubbers there was always a sense of comfort in knowing that someone with a whole lot more experience than you had your back. Now there was no one. If things were as Miranda said they just point him to what needed doing and give him a firm slap on the ass to get him going. No regs, no chain of command, no clear objectives: just go and kill what needs killing. He wondered if anyone man should have all that power – and he wondered if he had a choice in the matter. The Reapers were coming, and in these Collectors were in cahoots with them…

It was on that dour note that Shepard finally fell asleep in that too soft bed. He was fearing for the future… but tomorrow would always come regardless.

* * *

He woke only a few hours later, rejuvenated but restless, and more or less sprang from his bed and into the shower connected to his cabin, taking the time to take a shower and get used to how his body looked now after he had been dead for a long time. His muscles had slackened, his skin rough with scars he didn't recognise, and there was a large knot in the skin just beneath the nape of his neck. Most distressing of it all though was the slight shine he could tell was in his eyes, a metallic glimpse in the deep of the lush green. Cybernetics, no doubt. He didn't notice it if he didn't think about it, but now that he knew it was present there was no way he could unsee it ever again.

No. He shook his head under the warm water of the shower and let his aching limps warm at the notion. Idle thinking like that lead nowhere and was nothing but unproductive. He was what he was now. He just hoped they hadn't installed some control chip or something into his brain. That'd just suck on so many levels.

After pulling on his new fatigue trousers but remaining shirtless he began his customary morning exercise that he always did unless he was called into an op or was in the middle of an active warzone: push ups, sit ups, crunches, leg folds and back raises before some stretching and shadow boxing. But to his disappointment it didn't go so well. Instead of his customary one hundred push-ups his arms trembled and gave out after eighteen, making him swear savagely over the incompetence of fate. But he forced himself through the entire set, even though he had to go to the bathroom and violently throw up by the end of it, and cooled himself down with trying to get his body to become accustomed to the old moves he had used to pull in hand-to-hand combat. His hips were stiff, his knees unyielding, his shoulders trembling from his previous exercise, but he forced himself through the practices.

It was in the middle of a roundhouse kick that Miranda entered his cabin unbid, but as she saw that he was intensely focused on getting his body back in shape she guessed that her message could wait a little. She settled back against the wall beside the door and watched him practice his kicks and his strikes and his combinations, thinking that his body, now glistening with sweat and muscles beneath his skin stretching it as they slowly began to return to their old elasticity, looked entirely different from when she had worked over his unconscious form only a few months ago, all haggard and pale and sunken. She watched him with… she guessed that sensation was pride over a job done well? And she had to admit, now that he was awake, that he was quite attractive.

"Something you wanted, Lawson?" he asked as he finished and settled back onto his cot, legs and arms trembling with the strain. "We're moving out soon, I hope?"

"You've decided to join us, Commander?" she wondered at his words, to which he shook his head and gestured to the room.

"This place… it could easily be turned into a cell. And I guess you had a point to bringing me back to life in the first place, so I'm willing to hear you out". Her previous words _– no one at Cerberus would begrudge your decision_ – echoed in his head and made his hackles rise but still rang despicably true.

"Good. Shower and get dressed. The Illusive Man wants to speak with you" she informed but made no attempt to leave even when he stood and gave her a meaningful look. "I've relieved the guard at your door, and I will be the one to escort you to the mess hall and then to the Illusive Man. I will wait here until you are done".

He narrowed his eyes at her. "As long as you don't spy on me in the shower" he warned.

"Commander, please. I've spent the last two years and eleven days rebuilding you from naught. I have seen every single inch of your skin-" she gasped and averted her eyes when he, in a bout of spiteful childishness, pulled down his trousers almost pointedly, and a… point he certainly made. "Do hurry" she then implored him and went out the door, wondering what was going through the head of that damn infuriating man. Doubtlessly the same thing as went through the head of most people and aliens of a certain persuasion and orientation when they saw her dressed in her standard uniform. That was the point of her clothes and uniform, after all. Her looks were just another tool in her extensive arsenal of weapons… but she supposed either gender could weaponise their sexuality.

Almost twenty minutes later she led him, still holding a strawberry flavoured energy bar in one hand while happily munching on the caramel flavoured one he held in the other, both of which he had picked up from the station-side cantina, up a flight of metal stairs towards a small, featureless chamber. "Please stand on this dais, Commander" she indicated a small upraised circle of metal in the floor of the room, and confused he did as he was bid. "The Illusive Man will see you momentarily. If you would hand me your-"

"Shepard doesn't share food" he muttered back and shoved the rest of one energy bar whole into his mouth and the other down his pocket, to which she nodded curtly and then stepped from the room, leaving him all alone on the daise. "Wait-" with a mechanical hiss and the whirring of holographic machines firing up a screen rose from the edges of that dais, a scanner device meant to display his three dimensional image to a far-off location. Suddenly he found himself standing in a virtual representation of a massive office before a burning blue son just outside a panorama window, a man sitting in a throne-like chair in the centre of a great mirrored floor with his back surrounded by computerised holograms of a constant encrypted datastream.

"Commander Shepard" the Illusive Man was… surprisingly ordinary. He was well dressed, a little short, obviously affluent by the cut of his clothes and the way he carried himself, his hair greying so gracefully that Shepard was convinced it was either a wig or dyed. His only remarkable feature was his blue eyes, made even further striking by the cybernetic implants in them, just like those Shepard now had but much less obvious.

"Illusive Man. I'd thought we'd be meeting face to face". At the sight of the man responsible for so much destruction and carnage and senseless death Shepard supported his weight on his rear-most leg and crossed his arms before his chest, a pre-emptive glare directed the head of Cerberus's way.

"A necessary precaution. Not unusual for people who know what you and I know". The Illusive Man's voice, on the other hand, was entirely unordinary: smooth and authoritive, his every word a dagger coated in honey and silk, but there was a steely intelligence within it possessed of ruthless efficiency. What was going on with that, anyway? Shepard wondered. Was a voice like you did vid-trailers or audio books on a professional level a job requirement for becoming a Cerberus top-shot?

"You might be the reason I'm still alive, but that doesn't mean I trust you". No matter the voice, no matter the intelligence and the civil appearance despite the cigarette held in the Illusive Man's hand, he resolved to never trust the man. The devil kept a civilised appearance only to trick mortals into going along with his plans, after all. And Shepard would never work with terrorists.

"You need to put your personal feelings aside". At that Shepard couldn't help but arc his lips in a wry smile, scoffing in a low tone.

"Coming from the man who runs an entire organisation of xenophobic idealists, forgive me if that sounds insincere". Against his shrewd retort the Illusive Man narrowed his robotic, inhumanly cold eyes, cold enough to make Miranda's iciest glare seem like a heated begging for a romp in the hay.

"Humanity is up against the greatest threat of our brief existence" he spoke then, tapping his cigarette to get rid of some of the ash clinging to the embers on it's end like blood onto the hands of a mass murderer, his tone making no dispute as to what threat he was referring.

"The Reapers".

"Good to see your memory is still intact. How are you feeling?" He was making conversation, but… it was perfunctory, level and distant, as if fulfilling an obligation. He didn't care, not really. All he wanted was a soldier to fight for him.

"You need to earn the right to ask me those kinds of questions" Shepard wasn't politically inclined and thus had no patience for circular crap like that. He was a soldier, and Cerberus were terrorists. If the situation had been just a little different there there would have been nothing stopping him from pulling out shotgun and assault rifle and start wrecking the entire station – N7 style.

"Cerberus isn't evil. You and I are on the same side. We just have different methods". Yeah… but the surest sign of evil there was would be your own insistence that evil didn't exist. Once you had compromised yourself beyond the level of rationalisation by simple dichotomies, this wounding your own moral cornerstone irrevocably; that was when you started to espouse such practices. Things in the universe were hardly simple, Shepard had to say that – but there was such a thing as right and wrong. But he hadn't been brought back from the dead to argue moral philosophy.

"Cut to the chase" he snapped at the Illusive Man, who stiffened just a hint in his seat at the Commander's tone. "What were the Reapers doing that made you decide to bring me back?"

"We're at war" spoke the Illusive Man as he rose from his seat, stubbing out his cigarette and leaving the embers dying behind him. "No one wants to admit it, but humanity is under attack. While you've been sleeping entire colonies have been disappearing. Human colonies, all over the Terminus systems". So that was why they had brought him back, and why the Alliance wasn't doing anything to help contain the situation, leaving it in the hands of scum like Cerberus. "We believe that someone is working for the Reapers – just as Saren and the Geth aided Sovereign. You've seen it yourself. You bested all of them. That's just one reason we chose you".

"Nothing you say is going to convince me to trust you. I need more than words". After all, he talked a good game – but so did ambassador Udina, and Shepard absolutely loathed that man.

"I'd be disappointed if I could persuade you that easily. Go and see for yourself. I have a shuttle waiting to take you to Freedom's Progress: the latest colony to be abducted". The leader of Cerberus flicked out with one finger to bring up two screens to hover in the air on either side of him: dossiers with pictures of the two that had followed Shepard from Lazarus Station. "Miranda and Jacob will brief you".

"Is this a volunteer mission, or am I being volunteered?" This was all very lineal, and he was starting to feel cornered by Cerberus on one side and his own principles on the other.

"You always have a choice, Shepard. If you don't find the evidence we're both looking for, we can part ways amicably. But first, go to Freedom's Progress" said the Illusive Man as he sat back down upon his tone, his stare so intent that even Shepard had to look away, something not even a Reaper had been able to do. "Do you agree?"

"There was this dog once, back on Earth" Shepard spoke slowly, weighing every word carefully. "He was patchy, stank something horrible, and he thought he was better than us urchins. Used to chase us, and if he caught you he'd maul you something terrible. Thought he was just protecting his territory, being all noble and stuff. Actually he was a mad beast, a crazy dog kept up with nothing but hatred and bloodlust". Shepard looked the Illusive Man's impassive stare for the longest time. "We called him Cerberus".

"Did you, now?" the leader of "Humanity's vanguard" raised a calculating eyebrow. Such allegations were commonly levelled at him by those who he considered small-minded and simple.

"No" came the answer, making the Illusive Man smirk.

"That was very low of you, Commander".

"I'm officially KIA and working with terrorists" he grumbled back and crossed his arms before him before he cleared his throat. "I'll work with you" he grudgingly spoke as he felt like he was signing away soul to a demon. "People are disappearing, and the Alliance won't do anything about it. If it's connected to the Reapers-"... Well, if so they would just have to see.

"Good" came the nod. "I'm glad, Commander. We will have you shipped out ASAP. Your new ship and crew will be meeting you on Freedom's Progress. Miranda and Jacob will be joining you for the mission. Find out why our people are disappearing. Illusive Man out". And with that the holographic interface was switched off, leaving Shepard once more alone in a small and featureless room with nothing but his thoughts. As he stood there he barred his teeth for the faintest of instants.

He had been brought back from the dead by a shadowy cabal bent on subjugation and human advancement. And now, with not as much as a pause to breathe, he was being sent back to war. But he was a soldier, and fighting was what he did best.

So he had no idea if he bared his teeth in a resigned grimace or a battle-hungry snarl.

Most likely it was both.

* * *

"Why do you need all that armour, Commander?" Jacob wondered as they headed for the shuttle of Minuteman Station, Jacob and Miranda in their sleek and skin-tight uniforms making Shepard look decidedly out of place in his newly procured heavy ceramic and kevlar plating. "You're a biotic like us, sir. Why would you even need armour and kinetic shields when you can substitute it with biotic barriers?"

"You know what a cataphract is, Taylor?" Shepard asked back, rolling his armoured shoulders with a satisfied grin. It felt good being encased in plate again, and the rattling clamour caused by him stomping down the hallways in full armour was a joy to his ears. Of course he was just making noise for noise's sake, but if it pissed off those Cerberus terrorist dicks...

"Is it Ike a Turian thing, sir?" Jacob probed as he and Miranda both examined that suit of plate. The Commander had been given a suit like theirs with integrated Omni-tool and medi-gel dispensers and a VI-integrated visor, but he had taken one look at it, shrugged, frowned pensively, pulled out his pistol and shot it through the midsection, inspecting the hole burned through the suit before nodding and stomping off to find an armoury.

Ten minutes later he had emerged in black marine armour, modular plating and angular lines and all, the prototype of another few suits being loaded onto his Cerberus-supplied frigate as they went on the mission, the Cerberus logo on its shoulder covered with children's band aids in navy blue and butcher pink with little cartoon elephants on them stolen from the medbay aboard the station. The Cerberus medical officer who had been on duty at the hour of their arrival had been terrified when a full-armoured goliath of a Commander Shepard stomped into her med-bay and asked for the most twee band aids she had. Miranda had gotten a very stimulating call about that. She sighed internally at how much mouthing off she'd get during the next Cerberus Council session.

"A cataphract is a type of cavalry, Jacob" she informed while she internally sighed over how this would look in her report to the Illusive Man. "During the primitive wars on Earth two thousand years ago-"

"The elite Persian and then, later on, eastern Roman cavalry" Shepard interrupted with nary a glance at Miranda, the woman having done nothing to earn his trust so far. "They were the most skilled and ruthlessly trained warriors of their time, but their strength lay in their armour. Not just the protection it offered - the weight of their armour made their charge almost unstoppable. It's physics 101: velocity times mass equals net force on impact". Also, the fact that this new armour had a reinforced and raised neck-piece was quite comforting given how he had died the last time.

"Permission to say that you are insane, sir?" Jacob went, to which Shepard chuckled.

"Permission granted, officer" Shepard went, and Miranda snorted at the antics of the two. "Something on your mind, Lawson?"

"Relentless assault is nothing but suicidal when you are up against someone stronger or nastier than yourself" she espoused the experience she had gained over the years working for Cerberus as a project leader, administrator, spy, enforcer and sometimes assassin.

"Luckily I've never met anyone nastier than me who wasn't a Reaper" he made as if to dryly joke with her, but she merely shrugged it off. "There's all kinds of combat doctrines, Lawson - and I try to follow the one I know best" he answered her criticism readily as they descended the stairs into the shuttle bay, the odd Cerberus personnel giving them long looks but little else. It was odd, Shepard thought. They were in a military installation - or something that at least tried to look like one - so where were all the call signs, the Whiskey Tango Foxtrots and the salutes? He had probably just spent too much time on an Alliance warship.

As they boarded the shuttle to the nearby colony of Freedom's Progress Miranda gave her new commander the longest of looks, staring at his back as he climbed into a seat opposite from where she and Jacob sat down and the shuttle pilot, a man named Meyers who long since had his tongue ripped out by Turian pirates before he joined Cerberus and thus had to rely on a voice modulator to speak. He was wearing what seemed like an entire arsenal – a pistol, a submachine gun, one at each hip, a shotgun on the small of his back, and an assault rifle and a sniper rifle on his back on each side of a grenade launcher – and as the shuttle took off for deep space and Freedom's Progress he took out each weapon and one by one checked their status while he spoke to her and Jacob.

"If I'm going to be serving with you two from now on I need to know a little about you" he spoke while he checked the pistol slung from his right hip and the submachine gun hanging from his left. "Jacob, you talk like an Alliance soldier. Where did you train?"

"Utopia Relay boot camp, sir. Trained as biotic support officer - used to call us 'Vanguards of the Alliance Marines' - and Z-G certified at the Elysium Gates Station. Sir, if I may ask - what's the point of carrying both an assault rifle and a submachine gun?"

"The first one's for suppressive fire and formation assault" Shepard answered as he pointed to the assault rifle slung side by side with the grenade launcher they had picked up on Lazarus station and a sniper-rifle he had purloined from the armoury. "The second one's for when you need to take down shields with sustained fire at close range and use your other hand for biotics. If you trained out of Elysium you've must have been there during the blitz if you served for five years".

"Yeah. We were still cadets, away on field ops out in the Verge, when the Bats hit Elysium. Training was suspended and we were moved to Arcturus Station until the counter-push in 77, when we were sent in. I was assigned to a cruiser… the SSV Cairo. After Torfan some hot shot in charge noticed the way I made my pistol sing and that my dad used to be civilian spacer and transferred me to the Corsairs".

"I remember the Cairo" Shepard nodded, electing a glint of the eye from Jacob. "You laid down fire on the Batarian capital so that we could roll in the Grizzly tanks after and take out the resistance. I was on the ground, under Major Styles-"

"Styles? Like Major 'No Styles', from the SSV Buttplug?" At Miranda's long look at the two Jacob turned to her and began to explain. "The SSV Beirut. Styles was one mean SOB, and admiral Hackett wasn't much for the man – or so I heard. He and his ship were stuck on the rear guard during all deployments. That's why we called it the Buttplug: it was in the rear and full of shit. And 'Bats' is short for-"

"Batarians" she noted dryly before waving them on. "I figured as much. Don't let me interrupt your military reminiscence".

"ETA to Freedom's Progress?" Shepard inquired.

"Five hours, Commander" answered the synthesiser voice of the tongueless pilot, and Shepard shivered at the mechanical sound. Too much like Sovereign for his liking.

"Did we have to go from colony to colony in a tiny shuttle?" he asked Miranda and Jacob, and the latter shrug while the first only gave him a long look that told him that he had better things to do than complain. "I just mean… oh, never mind. So, Jacob – vanguard training out of Utopia. Fought with a guy from there once who had such training. We called him 'Kaboom'. Got himself blown to kingdom come in an op in Terminus space, so it was a little more appropriate than we thought. So… you specialise in pulling the enemy out of cover with tech and biotics, allowing people like me to close in and get the job done".

"That's one way of putting it, sir" Jacob nodded, surprised at the Commander's intimate knowledge of the fighting traditions of the Alliance to such a point that he could pin-point one's skills using only one's boot camp.

"Right. I need folk like that, you should know. You might've noticed, but I'm pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to my personal combat doctrine. How about you, Lawson?"

"If this is about qualifications you have nothing to worry about" she replied levelly as she tapped the edge of her seat with her fingers in an annoyed gesture. "I can crush a mech with my biotics or shoot its head off from a hundred yards – take your pick".

"You got a pretty advanced Omni-tool" he indicated her right forearm with a nod. "Custom stuff. Speaking of that, I noticed you only had the standard combat adapted ones in the armoury at Minuteman. It's not really like the ones they have at the ICT".

"I do have some tech and hacking expertise. Your point being?" Miranda wondered.

"Quite simply: where is my Omni-blade? I might be a biotic but amps overheat or break if you get as much as a fractured skull, and then what you have are guns and bombs and blades. Since you guys didn't have any grenades at the armoury I'm stuck with hitting things with the butt of my rifle like a vorcha construction worker if any hostiles come close enough to snuggle with me".

"Your new ship will meet up with us on Freedom's Progress – if you come to your senses and start working with us properly" Miranda admonished then, speaking firmly as if to a troublesome child… which she was starting to think that Shepard was being. "Aboard that ship is a state of the art armoury and weapons fabrication unit. You will have your heavy ordinance, don't you worry-"

"If I decide to join you?" his eyes became flinty hard as he stared back at her, fierce and unshaken.

"If you _agree_ to _work with_ us" she emphasised the differing words in that sentence from his original version as if it made all the difference in the world – which it very might well have done.

"Giving you a ship, a crew, resources and telling you to go nuts and raise hell?" Jacob went, ever trustworthy, defining the situation in short broad strokes. "It's one mighty fine sale's pitch, sir".

"It ain't about the sale's pitch, Jacob" Shepard looked to the slightly younger soldier with a heavy and contemplative look. "It's about saving people. It's about doing what's right. It's about helping one's people survive. There's a darkness coming – and I'll be damned if I let this galaxy go quietly into that good night".

"'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'" Miranda mused in response to his unintended quote of that old Earth poem, cocking her head to the side as Shepard slung back his pistol and submachine gun and took out to examine the sniper rifle. Maybe he wasn't just a dumb grunt that had gotten lucky after all. Maybe there was actually some usefulness and substance within him – though she would believe it when she saw it.

"You know, most people other than snipers and infiltrators don't bother with sniper rifles, Commander" Jacob went as Shepard extended the rifle to its full length and calibrated the sight for firing from more than two hundred yards but less than five hundred. "You got sniper training too?"

"Jack of all trades, master of none" he shrugged back. "I spent a lot of time with my crew when chasing Saren, and I made sure to learn at least a little from all of them. I don't have the patience or the head for advanced hacking and engineering, but… Tali showed me how to jury-rig a pistol into a makeshift bomb, and Garrus taught me a thing or two about sniping – though with him it was a little of a mutual exchange. I'm not the combat sniper he is, but I am easily as good as him in calm conditions".

"Is there anything you can't do, sir?" Jacob asked, clearly in awe, and the tone in his voice sickened Miranda. At his words Shepard grew a little flushed in the cheeks from embarrassment.

"I've been told that my dancing isn't… the greatest. Also, I couldn't tell you anything about colony development or financial regs if you put a gun to my head. I'm a soldier. It's all I am, and all I've ever wanted to be".

And now they were counting on him to save the entirety of humanity, Miranda reflected as silence settled around them, the man in question moving from examining his sniper rifle to his assault rifle to a heavy combat shotgun, muttering all the while about the poor quality of Terminus System's gear. Was he the warrior they needed to face the coming darkness?

She supposed that time would tell.

* * *

And time did tell – and brutally so.

Not six hours later they were hunkered down behind a blown apart concrete wall in what had used to be the central business district of Freedom's Progress, hiding from two YMIR mechs who, as opposed to the one Jacob and Shepard had taken down on Lazarus Station, were not too shy about using their built-in rocket launchers. Landing on Freedom's Progress had been an eerie thing: the small city was silent, silent as the grave, a ghost town from which it seemed the people had been as plucked out of existence by a sudden and merciless hand, leaving the homes and ways of the colony empty but still warm. Tables set to diners, ovens still heated, water taps in bathrooms still running – every single citizen of the colony seemed to have just winked out of existence.

But the peace hadn't lasted. As the three of them stalked through the walkways of the colony a rustling could be heard and then, from out of nowhere, service machines, both humanoid LOKI mechs and more rudimentary serving bots – everything from turrets and support mechs to hulking construction behemoths. They had blasted their way through the colony, wondering where all the machines had come from and why mechs were trying to murder Shepard wherever they went. Miranda had to give it to Shepard, though: he was indispensable in a firefight. Quickly they had settled into a rhythm under his command, a command he seized so readily and naturally that it was actually a little bizarre, with she and Jacob holding back on the flanks as support and holding the advancing machines back with suppressive fire while Shepard charged in, a flurry of biotic fire as he smashed the resistance to pieces.

But then… they had come across the Quarians.

In front of them, despite her protests and her presence, he disavowed Cerberus and all but dismissed them as xenophobes and terrorists when faced with someone from his old life appeared. Fool – Cerberus was so much more than that. The Quarians, led by someone called Tali whom Shepard had seemed to help out on some sort of pilgrimage – undoubtedly some sort of alien custom she was unfamiliar with – had come to rescue one of their own. The Quarians didn't want to work with Shepard, or Cerberus for that matter given what had transpired during the Idenna incident – she resolved to reading through the mission reports from that particular chain of events again when she had the time – but Shepard had somehow managed to convince them that more hands on deck meant a larger chance for them to find their wayward son.

But the Quarian commanders had proved unreliable, as Miranda had suspected. Aliens often did in her experience. They had charged recklessly ahead and into the main quarter of the colony while Shepard's squad took another route, and so it led to the current situation and their current predicament: Shepard had, out of some strange sense of altruism, gone to the aliens' rescue, and when finding that the Quarian landing party was under the assault of a pair of YMIR mechs going berserk.

Another thing Miranda noted about Shepard was the near-constant cursing, something certainly not in the dossier about his stats that had been complied for her when she was given the reins to the Lazarus project. It seemed to be a tool to help him work through a pressured situation, as when he did he began barking orders seconds later. Coping mechanism to the stresses of command under fire? Perhaps. He was very effective at controlling the situation despite his tendency to press the attack recklessly.

"Tali!" Shepard barked into the communicator as they dashed for another piece of cover when the closest YMIR mech fired a rocket their way, blowing up the steel crates behind them and blasting their contents into oblivion. "How's your people doing?! Any chance we might get some assistance over here?!"

"I've got five with suit raptures and one marine who won't wake up no matter what I try!" came the response, forcefully but a little shaken in her words as if she was close to crying. "If we draw their fire we'll be shredded, Shepard! I can't do that to the people under my command!"

"I understand, Tali" Shepard replied in a surprisingly gentle voice as he, Jacob and Miranda ducked in behind a discarded length of concrete walling on the edge of the small square around which the shops and businesses of Freedom's Progress once had stood vibrant with patrons and business. "Okay, squad!" Shepard snapped away from her, all business again, to look to Jacob and Miranda. "Jacob! I need you and Miranda to stall the YMIR closest to us! Can you two manage that?!"

"Sure, sir! Without it turning us into mincemeat?! Not very likely, sir!" Jacob quipped back, and Miranda shot him an iron look. This was not the time for jokes and jests.

"We will draw its fire, Commander" she replied at him, level and ice cold, her ability to keep her head clear in any situation one of her strongest points – and she had plenty of strong points and skills. "What will you do? This is going to be one thought son of a bitch to take down".

"Whatever comes natural, Miss Lawson" he drawled with a smirk as biotic power began to whirl around him, pooling at his feet and his fists in particular. "Just keep one of the uglies off me while I take care of the other one, okay?"

"All on your own, Shepard?" she wondered, just like Jacob, if bringing him back had somehow damaged his faculties and reduced him to insanity. "Are you sure-?"

"Just watch me, Lawson" his smirk grew to a full-on grin before he leapt out of cover and began springing in an arch to the left, staying out of the field of view of the mech that had been firing on them and sliding over the snow-covered frozen ground of that winter planet when ducking under a fired rocket even as he went. He slung back his shotgun and traded it for his assault rifle, firing wildly at the rear-most of the mechs while Miranda and Jacob fired at the foremost, dividing their attention and halving their effectiveness.

And that was the whole guiding principle, and one he had to live with as they were out of grenades for the launcher on his back. Dividae et impera – divide and conquer. One of the oldest and most useful pieces of tactical advice in human history.

Slinging out his assault rifle Shepard fired in the direction of the mech as his ran across the frozen streets of Freedom's Progress, not aiming as he ran but still making sure that he was at least hitting the giant mech in the general vicinity of its midriff. His fire wasn't meant to take it down, just meant to wear down its shields until he could actually hit it once the kinetic barriers had been short-circuited and depowered. He fired again and again – until he heard a low click and hiss and noted that his M-8 Avenger, a rudimentary model used by what felt like literally everyone in the entire galaxy and their cat, was overheated, the thermal clip in it spent and so hot to the touch that they smouldered when he ejected it and tossed the rifle aside.

Oh well. How was it they did on the vids again? He pulled one gun from each hip, pistol in one hand and submachine gun in the other as he turned on the mech and gathered as much biotic power into his legs as he dared with the tell-tale migraine of overheating amps making itself known in his head. Rushing right at it as it began to charge up it's accelerator cannon Shepard leapt high into the air the instant before it began firing, landing on the roof of a low building and sprinting along it while the mech gunned after him with machine relentlessness. He was making his way back to Jacob and Miranda – the comschatter was non-descript and fairly monotone, which was more than likely not a very good sign in his experience – leading the machine after him in a game of mecha cat-and-mouse.

In the end he decided the battle not with biotic power, which he was trying to save up on, or with the other weapons, which jammed or overheated or otherwise made him yearn for the guns he had been training with back in ICT, but with the sniper rifle. After having depleted the machine's barriers with pistol and submachine gun he used a shotgun to blast apart its armour while he landed on the ground not too far of a distance from where Miranda and Jacob were presumably holding the line – Major Kirrahe style – against the other YMIR mech. He had shot the legs out from under it using his shotgun before one shot it fired ruined it as the poorly optimised rifle all but exploded when heat from the internal emission sinks didn't get routed to the thermal clip as it should have been, and so he had to fall back some ways and bring out the only gun he had left, the sniper rifle. Calmly, meticulously, standing still as a few stray shots grazed his barriers, he lined up the mech's optics with barrel and scope until he breathed in, breathed out and then, in the breathless state between exhalation and inhalation, fired one shot through its metal bucket of a head that made it violently and rudely self-destruct. At last!

A fine shot, he remarked as he lowered the rifle with a smirk. Garrus would have been proud if he'd seen that.

Panting, internally celebrating he turned around – only to find himself standing face to face with the other giant mech, the destruction of its peer prioritising its vendetta protocol and making it hell bent on charging on Shepard. And Shepard, who only had a sniper rifle in his hands, could do very little as a rocket blasted from out of its arm cannon and came speeding towards him. He threw himself down and away, losing grip on the grip of the sniper rifle in the process, but it didn't matter much as the rocket missed him only to strike the concrete wall behind where he had been standing before, and large piece of shrapnel blasted off from its shell to pierce his armour through the back, not going all the way through the metal but enough the short-change the last of his kinetic barriers. Rising, dazed and wary, Shepard turned to climb onto his knees while the YMIR mech clanked its booming steps towards him, and when he did manage to look up at it was a mere couple of feet away.

Well, he was done for. That was what was going through his mind when that mech levelled its mass accelerator cannon at him. Quite anticlimactic, really. Being killed after people spent so much time rebuilding him –

But Miranda had other ideas.

Launching herself infront of the man by way of a running leap that would have been impossible for anyone but her to perform in the high heels of her cat-suit she rolled up in front of the downed Commander. With both hands stretched out before her as she pushed her barriers to the max and charged up a powerful dark energy field, a shield over her and Shepard against which the shots of that soon roaring machine gun bounced off harmlessly while she buckled under the strain of the relentless assault. Struggling to remain standing she braced that barrier on one forearm, holding her bulwark up with a trembling arm while her other, armed with Omni-tool whirring and active and shining brightly bronze-gold with terrible intent, activated an overload protocol. Suddenly the machine knelt over and twitched horribly as the static data and peaks in its power system rendered it incapable of firing anymore, at least for an instant of respite for Shepard and his squad.

Ripped from the cusp of certain death Shepard couldn't help but stare in disbelieving awe as Miranda turned to him, reaching out a slender and, to his eyes right then, perfectly slender hand for him to take.

"Come on, Commander" she panted as she pulled him to his feet as the giant mech shuddered and sputtered. "I've spent too much time on rebuilding you to have you die on me now". As she took his hand, her grip surprisingly strong despite the apparent thinness of her arms, he couldn't help but think… maybe it was because of the explosions or the near-death experience, maybe it was all the adrenalin hammering through his system, but he thought that she looked extremely beautiful right them. All dark hair and bright blue eyes and curves all over – he shook those inappropriate thoughts from his head as they both turned back to the fighting ahead. "Any thoughts on how to deal with this?"

"You're the one who was right about the suicidal charge-thing" he muttered and brushed the dust from his shoulders. "I need some better weapons for this crap".

"Or a better squad" Miranda noted and took a stance, readying biotics with one hand and lifting her gun with the other. "A suggestion, Commander – the shock is wearing off. We should decide on how to deal with it before it regains its upper edge!"

"Right!" he barked back and hunkered down, making a snap decision. "How're your barriers, Lawson?!"

"The best ones in the squad" she qualified, to which he scoffed.

"Like that says a lot – there's three of us!" he snapped with wide eyes to find her smiling ever so slightly, the first time he had seen her emit any sort of emotion besides the quickly vanished rage she had shown after killing Wilson. "Alright then, Miranda – juice me up! I need to be nice and covered before this! Jacob! Get your fat ass over here!"

"Aye aye, sir!" Jacob hurriedly obeyed and sprinted closer while internally making a note of adding another five hundred to his crunches count for his regular exercise as Miranda hit the mech with another overload protocol to keep it on its knees while she charged up her barriers around Shepard, keeping him encased in a heavy biotic field.

"Jacob, Lawson" Shepard grunted as he gathered his own biotic power as he began to levitate slightly off the ground at the behest of a now strained and panting Miranda. "Imagine that I'm the cannon ball and you're the cannon. On my mark you give me your best throw power square in the back!" The machine before them slowly stopped twitching and its optics lit up as it resumed its rocket launcher targeting protocol. "Now!"

And, fittingly enough, as if launched out of a cannon Shepard flew when Jacob and Miranda hit him in full tandem with their biotic throwing power, sending him hurtling through the air at almost rocket speed. This, of course, was just what he was counting on. Moving too fast for the mech to react to but too slow for its kinetic barriers to absorb the force of the strike he slammed into its upper midriff with tremendous force, sending it reeling backwards, and using all of his massed biotic power, gathered into his fist, he smashed into its optics, hoping for a result like the last one he had taken down on Lazarus Station.

However, as soon as his arm went through its skull he could hear a timer counting downwards, and he knew that he had made a slight mistake in presuming all version of the YMIR mechs were constructed the same. He had just about managed to retract his arm and his squadmates jumped into cover when the shell of that machine exploded.

Rising warily from being knocked down by the blast Miranda gathered her wits about her and tried to clear away the ringing in her ear, helping Jacob to her feet and wondering if she, cell director and one of the top nine members of Cerberus, would be resigned to picking up the slack after a whole bunch of thundering mercenary dickheads in the coming months. Dazed and grinning and looking a little like a bobble-head with its head not screwed on right Shepard came stumbling through the smoke and the dust, a grin on his face so stupid that Miranda had to struggle not to sock him right in the jaw right then and there. "That was awesome!" he exclaimed excitedly, a little too loudly to hear himself over his sudden deafness. "That one goes into the tactics manual! Whoa!"

"Ass" she growled at him before she managed to regain control over her emotions and her countenance and drew the mask of civility over her frustration. Had the substance she had perceived in him earlier been nothing but the golden light reflecting off a stream of stale urine, a precious shine imagined in an unpolished and unrefined surface?

"Walk it off, Lawson" he said more than a little smugly as he reached back and moved to roll his shoulders before his face changed abruptly from smugness to pained. "Damn shoulder" he muttered with a grunt and then moved to one wall of the city centre still standing, slamming said part of his anatomy into it until, even through the armour, a loud pop could be heard as his shoulder popped back into its socket. "Agh! Let's not put that in the tactics manual, after all. Damn that hurts!"

"What's the orders, Commander?" Jacob wondered as he supported himself by leaning onto his knees with his hands, dead tired and worn down to the bone next to the Titan of Elysium and the most skilled human this side of the universe.

"You and Lawson search the area. Check for any evidence on who's behind these abductions" he reached for the lump of scar-tissue on his neck behind the reinforced and raised collar and rubbed it with a gauntleted hand, frowning slightly. "I'll check on Tali and her people. I want checkups every five minutes, and if you run into trouble you call for backup – got it?" Nodding the three of them split off, Miranda heading west and further into the financial district while Jacob went east towards the warehouses and residential area. After some twenty minutes of searching Miranda's eye was caught by something that was amiss in such a small colony – an electronics' store.

Moving up along the wall to that electronics' store Miranda narrowed her eyes as she brought up her Omni-tool, nodding as she scanned for active datastreams and found just such emissions coming from a room in the back of the store. Moving through the shop, past whirring machinery seemingly set up as some sort of rudimentary proximity alarm which she disabled with a single sweep of her Omni-tool and a few applied hacking Vis. One to the far door to what once had been an office she overrode the locks with a simple manoeuvre and went inside, only to hear low and confused gibberish on the air. "Monsters come" a voice spoke from out of the mask of a Quarian in a white and red exo-suit perched before a whole wall of computer screens, hissing and spitting and obviously perched on the brink of insanity if not pushed off it already. "Monsters coming back. Mechs will protect. Safe from swarms. Have to hide. No monsters. No swarms. No-no-no-no-no".

"Commander?" Miranda asked softly into her communicator, receiving a signal of copying in return. "I've found your missing Quarian – and the source of our troubles here".

Shepard hurried over, the Quarian Tali and Jacob in tow, and what followed made Miranda once again amazed at the perceptive capabilities of the Illusive Man. She had complete and utter faith in his visions – and as he kept something very precious to her hostage under the purview of safety she had best remain so loyal – but even she had to admit that his suspicions of Collector intervention in the Reaper agenda seemed a little far-fetched. But in this, as the recordings kept by that Quarian, called Veetor or something – she really didn't care – showed, he had been right, as he had been in many things. He was almost as rarely wrong as she was. As the rumours that had been going around Minuteman and Lazarus Stations were confirmed she was more concerned with extracting the information that wasn't quite as obvious.

But Shepard, as always, would not have it.

"The information he possess might save lives – human lives, Commander" she protested coldly as she and Jacob followed Shepard out of the central district, heading back towards their shuttle and their way off Freedom's Progress, their feet making blank impressions in the thin layer of settled snow upon the ground. "You should have brought him back with us. If he knew anything else-"

"You say that as if there's a difference between the value of alien life and human life" Shepard noted darkly, not amused by her and Jacob's protests at him handing over the Quarian Veetor to his people instead of going into a Cerberus containment and interrogation chamber like he should've. "He was sick, frightened, alone and delirious. Veetor needs his home and his family now, not your tender mercies".

"If we lose any more human colonists because of your conscience getting the better of you, Commander, their lives are on your head" Miranda informed him in a tone as icy as the air around them, and Shepard turned in a flash, eyes set hard on hers in a manner most confrontational.

"That's a whole lot more of maybes based on mayhaps, Lawson" he rumbled. "I'm not letting fear compromise who I am. Never had, never will".

"Yeah, you two better chill the hell out before someone get shot" Jacob came to the rescue and gently pried the two apart, turning chiefly at the Commander as he pulled out his Omni-tool and pulled up a single image. "You're ship's in orbit around the planet, sir" he showed that image to Shepard, whose irritation was swept away before a charging tide of mournful yet jubilant nostalgia. "I thought you wanted to know that we rebuilt-"

"The Normandy" Shepard stared in awe at that image.

It seemed he wasn't the only one to have risen from the dead.

* * *

… And scene!

 **A/N:** So… avid readers of my stuff might have noticed that I often include theme-songs to my writings. This is because I listen to music to get the creative juices flowing – so to speak – and I usually let one specific song decide the theme of the chapter. In this story I do that too, but I've also had a theme for each of the characters in Shepard's squad in mind. I include them here, mostly for my own reference, but in case anyone is curious you can read it too. To clarify – these are the songs I listen to when writing these characters. I own none of these songs, but I do like them.

Garrus: Nightwish's _Kinslayer_. 'Nuff said.

Grunt: Ensiferum - _One Man Army_. Perfect. Absolutely bloody perfect. _Heh heh heh_.

Jack: Arch Enemy's _War Eternal_ suits her personality, while _Stolen Life_ from the same band is perfect for her loyalty mission. In the third game it becomes Arch Enemy's _Under Black Flags we March_.

Jacob: Creedence Clearwater Revival's song _Fortunate Son_ , one of my dad's old favourites.

Legion: The Enigma TNG's _Vaden_. Who needs words or lyrics when you are a machine and capable of instant communication and mechanic consensus?

Miranda: Amaranthe's _Amaranthine_ for her romance with Sheppy, and Disturbed's _Stricken_ for her loyalty mission. Somehow it's just what I imagine her relationship with her father and her sister being. In the Mass Effect 3 arc that themesong shifts to become Sabaton's _To Hell and Back_.

Mordin: the _Higgs-Boson Songification_. My two favourite things in the universe – science and heavy metal – uniting to become something glorious.

Samara: Hammerfall's _Bushido_ for her character, and Miracle of Sound's _Road Rage_ for her loyalty mission and her quest to end her beloved daughter.

Tali: Butcher Babies' _Never Go Back_ for the abuse she suffers from all over in Mass Effect 2.

Thane: _Breathe Life_ by Killswitch Engage. The title was just way too apropos to pass up on.

Zaeed: The Pretty Reckless' _Messed Up World_ – the uncensored version. Money and cynicism in the extreme, as well as curses, fitting Zaeed to a tee.

And Sheppy's, good old Commander Shepard's, theme is _Blood Bound_ by Hammerfall. Listen to it… you'll see why. Also the music video is so much awesome.

One last reflection: Miranda's power-set is very much like the Sentinel Shepard's – both biotic and tech abilities and wielding a heavy pistol and a submachine gun. I was wondering… she wears her cat suit per default, but maybe she gets that alternate appearance pack armour later on, and it just so happens to be tech armour like the Sentinel's? I like the idea of all of the characters in Sheppy's squad becoming more powerful, better armed and armoured in tandem with their story-wise ability.

And one last note: Miranda and Sheppy dislike and mistrust each other at first rather than the near-instantaneous camaraderie that occurs in the game, only to then grow closer until the point that they are almost stomach-churningly sweet with each other by the end. That's my head-Canon, anyway.

Now, question: should I change the rating of this fic to M, for Mature? I'll have to censor Jack's and Zaeed's dialogue otherwise, and I kind of don't want to do that. Let me know what you think by leaving a review! Until then…

DFTBA!


	3. Archangel

A/N: So… This chapter was going to be short. Six thousand words, tops. Instead… ugh, I need to know when to stop writing.

By popular behest I'm upping the rating of this story to M from T. Even though neither Jack nor Zaeed are in this chapter I'm doing it already… mostly because this chapter features a person getting their skull smashed in.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

The theme song of this chapter is _Stand up and Fight_ by Turisas. Seemed appropriate for Garrus's set of mind as of that moment when we meet him. I would have spoiler-warned that, but… we've all played the game or read the stories. We all know who Archangel is.

* * *

Chapter 3: Archangel

* * *

"So…" Things were, almost needless to say, a little awkward as Jacob, Miranda, Jeff "Joker" Moreau and Yeoman Chambers stood waiting outside the door to the communications room aboard the Normandy SR-2 while its captain stood within that same room speaking with the Illusive Man. Joker, feeling a little out of place amongst the Cerberus staff and especially the two cat-suit clad operatives Jacob and Miranda – he wasn't a marine himself, but he had to admit that he preferred it when soldiers wore actual armour and not fetish-fuel outfits that must have been a bitch to get into – tried impotently to make conversation with the former security officer while Miranda and Kelly Chambers were discussing something in low and serious tones a little ways off. "You, ehm, exercise a lot? 'Cos it looks to me like you do sit-ups. Just, like, all of the sit-ups, all of the time".

Miranda and Yeoman Chambers, however, were talking about much more serious things. "I agree, director Lawson" Kelly nodded to the deadly woman's reasoning, seeing the worth in her views as the two conversed about psychology. "The Commander's reckless and, I would say, near-suicidal behaviour down on Freedom's Progress is out of character… but it is to be expected, from a purely psychological standpoint of course. He was brought back from the dead – which is bound to instil a feeling of invincibility in him – but at a physically lessened state. He no doubt feels the need to prove to himself, and us, that he is just as physically capable and just as strong now as he was before his death. This behaviour should no doubt peter out by itself as he settles back into his old routine and gathers friends around him".

"Of course" Miranda agreed coldly, having guessed all of this already based on her own extensive schooling in psychology and how to handle people of a more volatile nature. "I know. I just needed a second opinion. As long as this behaviour is a passing fancy and not something I will have to deal with on regular occasion. If he dies in the mission…" she locked eyes with Chambers and emphasised her words in a particularly gruesome fashion. "Any idea of how to make him become more reasonable?" She almost said "pliable", like she would have when discussing the fact with other Cerberus operatives, but changed it in the last moment due to her knowing that the man they called Joker was not loyal to Cerberus but to Shepard, and utterly so.

"In my expert opinion?" the other woman acknowledged Miranda's choice of phrase with the faintest of arching eyebrows and narrowing of eyes. "Give him time to settle in, and provide more control, or the illusion of control, to him. Once he feels he has more to say in the workings of our operation he will no doubt settle back into a more responsible command role and cease rushing madly into battle if only to feel he has control over his own fate".

"Ugh" Miranda shook her head at her nominal colleague and fellow Cerberus operative and all the rest of the world. Kelly's greatest strength was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, her acting abilities and her almost uncanny skill for adapting her behaviour to suit others: Miranda had seen her acting professional around her, lewdly and forwardly against some servicemen, giddily and childishly towards others, changing her personality like a chameleon did pigmentation. "Men. Always with the insecurities and the overcompensating for everything with their overtly phallic guns. One wonders why the galaxy even bothers with them".

"Unfortunately males seem to be a prerequisite for human reproduction" Kelly adopted that same slightly frustrated tone as Miranda in seeing that her cell director needed to vent, if only a little. It was Miranda, after all – it would only have been strange if she was overtly approachful. "Now, if only we could do like the Asari-"

"That would be simpler, yes?" came the agreement with a tired nod as Miranda let things rest and got back to the matter at hand. "Do you know of any way one can speed up the Commander's acclimation process? I'd rather he not charge madly into a throng of Vorcha or Krogan only to get shot dead by a stray butterfly or something".

"Well, he is a soldier" Kelly's Omni-tool flashed as she activated it and brought out the dossier that had been compiled for her on Shepard and his character, written mostly by the hand of Miranda and some woman she was unfamiliar with called Hope Lilium – obviously a fake name. "He served no less than nine years in the Alliance Navy before he became a Spectre, not accounting for his time in training. Having him surrounded by military memorabilia would most likely increase his sense of comfort. Perhaps painting his armour with the N7 logo and forgoing the Cerberus one? Encouraging him to get some fish for that aquarium in his cabin and maybe get a hobby, like collecting model spaceships, to bring his mind off the mission? Recruiting a personal trainer for him to work out his _frustrations_ with?"

Miranda was surprised at the slight drawling lithe to Chambers' voice when the young woman mentioned that strange and now ambiguous word. Was she…? "Are you attracted to our Commander, Chambers?" Did she have to go on a lecture on what the appropriate mode of conversation was with project assets that they might have to terminate anyway? Doing that just seemed like a waste of time to her.

"He is quite accomplished" Kelly noted with a slight and mischievous grin. "And handsome. There's a lot of ways to handle stress… just saying. But I'm talking to the Ice Queen of Cerberus. You never pursue any form of cordial relationships with anyone, either under your command or not. There's a betting pool going around on what… generates your mass effect fields, as it were".

"It's none of your business, Yeoman Chambers" Miranda glowered at the woman, to which Kelly backed off and held up her hands as if threatened to show that she was not pressing the issue. Snorting Miranda settled back against the steely blank wall of the ship, arms crossed before her and one leg in front of the other. The last thing she needed was someone trying to psychoanalyse her – and she definitely did not need a friend.

Soon after the door to the briefing and communication's room slid open and Commander Shepard, scowling softly, stepped out with a weighty stride, thankful that his chief people had gathered like he instructed around him, Joker limping and crouched over but now able to walk of his own accord after an extensive bone-reinforcement treatment and a great many implants. He stopped and stared at Miranda as soon as the door slid shut behind him, his lips curling into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I'll work with you" he spoke, to which Miranda just about managed to keep back a sigh of relief at her efforts over the last two years having not been wasted. "I'll take down the Collectors with you. Happy now?"

"Not even remotely" she answered and stood tall before him, Jacob and Chambers forming up behind her. "I trust that the Illusive Man informed you of the current situation?"

"Yeah. You're my XO and staff chief, and my job's just to tell us where to go and to shoot things and maybe to pick up some people dumb enough to bring through the Omega 4 relay with us. That sound about right?" Miranda nodded, satisfied for now with that… colourful description, and followed Shepard as he made his way over to the armoury, the band in tow after them. "He said that you had some dossiers for me. Is that right?"

"We've about one hundred and nineteen potential recruits" Miranda spoke, stopping Shepard dead on the spot just as they had gotten through the armoury doors, making turn and stare at her with wide eyes. "Of course, that's just the ones we prioritised out of our first selection of more than two thousand. At most you could fit ten – maybe twelve if we push it – specialists on this ship, including me and your new armoury sergeant, Jacob".

"Hm… and I who was looking forward to building my own private army" Shepard joked in a deadpan sort of way, making Joker chuckle and Jacob smirk. "Just… we'll go through them or something once I'm done in here. Jacob" the man in question nodded and stepped up to Shepard as they went to the large workbench in the centre of the shipside armoury. "You're in charge of this place. What capabilities does it have?"

"This is state-of-the-art, sir. By the rear wall is the model projection and computer, able to print out a full-scale plastic prototype of any weapon we design ourselves. These prototypes can then be fabricated out of real alloys and metals by the gunsmithing capabilities of the shipside foundry with the help of EDI-"

"The ship's artificial intelligence?" Shepard wondered, asking about the robotic voice he had been introduced to along with the ship's crew and a few other familiar faces like Joker and dr Chakwas from the SSV Normandy. Apparently this was an entirely new vessel, larger, newer and improved over the now ruined husk of the old Normandy that had crashed over… some frozen backwater called Alchera. Perhaps he should go there, pay his respect to Pressley and the ones that hadn't made it off the ship in time.

"Yeah. It'd take time, but with enough alloys available to us we can feasibly make most kinds of rudimentary firearms and energy weapons. Heavy weapons… the foundry isn't big enough for most stuff like that. And any armour we make has to be modular. We can't make an entire suit all at once".

"Some armour is definitely needed here" Shepard noted and looked to Jacob to then slide his eyes over Miranda, starting at the feet and going higher with his stare, stopping momentarily to focus at certain… _parts_ of her anatomy until his gaze landed on her eyes. For a minute she saw something there, not just a hint of intelligence in the green but also something… no, not a warmth, but the promise of it, like the faltering spring wind and gone just the same. "You two sure about wearing stuff like that into combat? If someone cuts through your kinetic barriers-"

"Won't happen, sir" Jacob shook his head at that, confident in his own powers and skills almost to the point of arrogance.

"Are you concerned about us dying prematurely, Commander?" Miranda pressed, wondering where this suddenly came from.

"You're on my crew, now, aren't you?" Shepard asked the empty air in front of him instead of looking right at them. "That makes it my job to keep you alive, to look out for you whether I trust you or not. Jacob, as chief armament officer it's now your job to handle armaments and fabrication for the rest of the crew. Your first special mission is to research some goddam ablative plating to reinforce those stupid jumpsuits". By the suddenly lost and more than a little apprehensive expression that crossed the former marine's face he realised something very important. "You're in the position so that no none Cerberus personnel get ahold of the fabrication station and makes a bomb or something. You actually don't know anything about gunsmithing, do you?"

"No, sir" he spoke, a little downcast and more ashamed. "I mod my shotgun and pistol, sir, but beyond that I just don't have the head for-"

"I was pretty bad at sword practice back in the ICT" Shepard spoke encouragingly to the man. "We had to, you know, in N7 Slayer training, but I never had any natural skill for it. All grace and set moves and katas – I'm a boxer and a brawler, not a dancer. But I stuck with it, and I was pretty good at it by the end of training. I haven't touched a sword since – useless pieces of crap compared to a shotgun – but the moral of the story is that I endured. You've got a fully sentient machine to teach you all about it, Jacob. Just stick with it and even the biggest idiot in the world can learn almost anything".

"Will do, Commander" Jacob snapped his heels together and saluted, a gesture Shepard returned in a loose and informal manner. It was good to have at least someone saluting you on that ship, he reflected. It might have looked like an Alliance ship even more so than the last iteration of the Normandy – at least the CIC and bridge-deck did, the only part of the ship he had seen so far – and the crew might mostly have been cast-off Alliance personnel, but none of them saluted when they saw him. In a way he liked that it was more informal than a real warship, but it was a warship, and if there was something he would stand hard on was the chain of command and the responsibilities of leaders. He would have to think on it later.

"Alright. Dismissed, Armoury Chief Taylor" Shepard settled the matter and then looked to the other three, noticing the impatient glare his pilot was giving him. "Don't give me that look, Joker. You don't have to be here for all of the meetings – just this first one. EDI" he spoke out into space, feeling a little like an idiot for talking to a machine. "Are you listening?"

"I am always listening, Commander" the soft and decidedly feminine but still thoroughly machine voice came from out of the intercom of the armoury, a digital representation of her presence – a transparent azure chess-piece… thing, Shepard had no idea what it was supposed to actually be – rising from the middle of the workbench for them to speak around.

"Yeah, because that isn't creepy as hell" Joker muttered but was silenced by his commander with a look. "Yeah, yeah – I'll make nice with the coming overlords, Commander".

"EDI, interface with Lawson's Omni-tool and bring up the dossier on potential recruits for the Lazarus Cell – the alien ones too" Shepard added, just in case the ideals of the organisation had shone through even there. "Arrange them in groups after last known location".

"Certainly, Commander Shepard" the machine replied and the holographic interface came to life in the colour of Omni-tool-orange, showing gatherings of square markers below the names of planets, systems and regions of space that dotted the air a few inches off the surface of the table. "Is this sufficient for your needs, Commander Shepard?"

"Quite EDI. Thank you" he nodded before he examined the gathering of points, each little square representing a single potential operative in the region of space under which names they gathered. If he understood the needlessness of thanking a machine for doing its job Miranda couldn't see any token of it upon his face, for he seemed to fall into a strange and deep concentration. "We're in the Horsehead Nebula… and there's only one recruit in this region of space". He clicked the dot and watched as a screen of data began to hover over the surface of the table. "EDI – read it back to us".

"Certainly, Commander Shepard-"

"Just 'Commander' will have to suffice, EDI" Shepard interrupted, focused on the economy of time.

"Of course, Commander. I will refer to you in such a manner when conversing with you from now on. The dossier follows". A brief pause came before the machine settled into information relation mode. "Name: Gerrik Qui'in. Species: Turian. Location: Port Hanshan, Noveria. Age: 29. Skills: Advanced hacking, robotic and technical expertise, rudimentary military training. Served thirteen years in the Turian military before being placed in charge of company security by his uncle Lorik Qui'in, manager of the Port Hanshan branch of Synthetic Insights Ltd. Speaks nine languages, has extensive knowledge of-"

"EDI - pause" Miranda stated, causing the reading to cease immediately. "What do you think, Commander? Thirteen years of military service is quite impressive". At that Joker scoffed in mock amusement, to which she turned her head at him and transfixed him with her iciest look. "Something funny, mister Moreau?"

"You obviously don't know squat about Turians, operative" Joker replied a little warily under the gaze of the former cell director for the Lazarus Cell. "I mean, you probably know all kinds of things about human history and stuff, and science and biotics and please don't shoot me-"

"At ease, you two" Shepard gruffed at them and summoned their attention. "Me and Joker served with Turians for a year and a half during the construction and outfitting of the SSV Normandy before Eden Prime, Lawson. After that we worked with Garrus Vakarian of C-Sec. Turians, almost all Turians, enlist in the military in some capacity at age fifteen and serve in the military, which is also the state and every executive branch thereof, until they are thirty years old. In actuality it's not very impressive on its own. EDI" he spoke to the machine "tell me which world was Gerrik stationed on, and in which legion".

"Certainly, Commander. Gerrik Qui'in was part of the 53rd planetary legion – the Crimson Warhawks – stationed on the Turian core world of Digeris. A member of the digital logistics division-"

"EDI – pause" the Commander shook his head softly at the others when hearing that. "'Digital logistics' is Turian fancy-speak for 'paper-pushers'. They do not move out of their cubicles except for when on drills… at least that's what Garrus told me. This Gerrik guy might be the best hacker since Tali, but he's a former office hack that's taken to corporate security. He's living a comfortable and peaceful life, and no way would he join the mission even if we paid him a fortune. This recruit is dismissed. EDI, there are no recruits in the Hawking Eta cluster, so move on to the Omega Nebula. I see that there are four recruits there: tell me their names, species and last known locations and surmise their primary skills with a single word".

"Certainly, Commander" EDI spoke as she complied the data requested. "Mirah T'Katim, Asari, Lorek in the Fathar system, pilot. Mordin Solus, Salarian, Omega in the Sahrabarik system, scientist. Zaeed Massani, Human, Omega in the Sahrabarik system, assault. Unknown – codename Archangel, Turian, Omega in the Sahrabarik system, undertaker".

"Undertaker?" Joker wondered from aside. "Is that a technical term or something? He's not an actual grave digger, is he?"

"EDI, explain your summation of this Archangel's skills" Miranda requested, to which a period of silence followed until it was suddenly broken by a hiss of static coming from a playback of a recording. A voice, using a synthesiser to remain anonymous, spoke from out of that recording, and despite the poor quality of the sound all of the people in the room could tell that the speaker was filled with righteous fury and entirely bereft of mercy.

"Listen here, all of you parasite mercs" the voice, flanging like Turian voices often did, spoke coldly in a recording broadcasted through the entirety of Omega Station weeks before Shepard was brought back to life. "You have preyed on the innocent and the weak for the last time. You know me. You know my deeds. I am the one that have been destroying your shipments and slaughtering your men. I am the one that killed Keroth of the Eclipse. I am the one that burned the Blue Suns base in the Kima district to the ground. I am your undertaker, the one who will bring justice to the people of Omega. The locals call me Archangel. You may call me Death". The static went away and when sound came out of the intercom it was Evie's voice that spoke. "End of recording".

"This guy is made of awesome" Joker decreed in a firm tone.

"Is this person taking on both the Blue Suns and the Eclipse all at once? Is he fighting the Bloodpack too?" Shepard had asked that question in a disbelieving tone but got only a nod in response from Kelly and Miranda, making his eyes widen. "Alright… this guy is unbelievable. We have to have him. This works out great for us: the Sahrabarik mass relay is the gateway to the Terminus systems. Joker, EDI – set us a course for Omega".

"Sure thing, Commander" Joker nodded reluctantly after giving a limp salute and limped off towards the bridge and his cockpit. "I will notify the crew" Yeoman Chambers said as she too turned and made to leave, leaving Shepard and Miranda alone in the armoury.

"The mission is finally underway" Miranda noted and turned to leave. "I am glad. If you need me I will be in my office on starboard side of the crew deck, Commander-"

"We have to work together here, Lawson" Shepard stopped her from going with a few words spoken a little dourly. "Your attitude isn't helping anyone. Adjust it, stat".

"I have the utmost respect for your abilities, Commander" she managed to keep most of the sarcasm out of her voice as she turned and spoke at him and internally marvelled at her own restraint. "Your motivations are what concerns me. I believe in what Cerberus stands for. The Illusive Man ordered you brought back; only time will tell if you prove to be an asset or a liability".

"If we're are going to be working together, Lawson, if you are going to be my XO, then we will have to learn to trust each other". She could tell that the misgivings they shared were completely mutual and fully reciprocated by the edge to his words and the steel in his voice.

"Trust was never a requirement between co-workers in any previous Cerberus projects that I've been a part of" she noted.

"I'm not your co-worker but your commanding officer, and this isn't a Cerberus operation" Shepard informed her in short terms. "As far as I see it I'm still an Alliance Marine and a Spectre, and this is a freelance Alliance effort. We do things by the book, or we don't do them at all".

"I know who I report to, and so do you. As long as you don't do anything to betray Cerberus I'll follow your orders". She cut the conversation short by approaching the door and making it slide open before her with the activating sensors. "You'd best get yourself some weapons you are familiar with, Commander. There are trials ahead not even you can face without a great deal of firepower".

"Damn Cerberus" Shepard cursed after she was gone, leaving him alone in the armoury with his thoughts and the AI that watched passively and intently upon everything that transpired in the halls of the ship. Was this the right thing to do? He had asked the Illusive Man about his old squad, about Tali and Garrus and Wrex and Liara – about Ashley – but none of them seemed to be able to come with according to him. He would have to confirm that for himself later on… but he needed people he could trust. Joker, Chakwas, those engineers that said that they had served aboard the SSV Tokyo all those years ago along with him: those he could trust… perhaps. Two years was a long time, and even with all of this going on he felt lost and isolated. Perhaps Miranda was right. He needed something to hold on to, something familiar to clutch as he tripped off the edge of that darkened and blood streaked cliff and fell down into hell itself with little chance to ever come back. "EDI" he spoke onto the open air of the armoury.

"Yes, Commander?" the machine answered immediately.

"Do you have Alliance arms schematics and specifications in that database of yours?" While chasing after Saren he had gathered an arsenal of some of the best weapons in the galaxy, outfitting each of his squad members personally according to the squad's tactical needs, but now… now he needed weapons he was familiar with, guns he knew inside and out from his days as a marine and as an N7 graduate.

"Certainly, Commander. Are you referring to N7-class armaments? That would be logical, given your service records". Oh, heck yes. That machine was clever and polite and very, very handy to have around. Shepard was getting the feeling that he and EDI would get along like a Batarian political house on fire.

"I certainly am, EDI. Could you commence fabrication or otherwise provide a few weapons according to my specifications?"

"Certainly, Commander. What weapons would you like me to fabricate?" Oh, that was going to be hard to decide. He felt almost like a child in a candy store – an arsonist terrorist of a child in a candy store filled with confections made out of gunpowder and napalm.

"Let's start with the heavy stuff. An N7 Assault Rifle from the Typhoon series. A light machine gun – heavy as all hell, but packs a hell of a punch, and the face-plate is pretty handy too. Do you have schematics for the '81 model, the one with the underslung grenade launcher mount?"

"Certainly, Commander" came the immediate response as the request was complied, and the foundry in the rear of the armoury began to come alive in a dull rumble as fabrication commenced. "What colour scheme would you like? There is the standard N7 black and red, the camouflage scheme with five different variations for different terrain, and the limited edition pink and gold".

"Just get me the black and red, EDI. Don't want to stick out like a hack in Omega's poor lighting, after all. Alright… now, can you make an N7 Crusader shotgun from '78, the Torfan assault model? It's got two firing modes – pellets and a high precision slug – making it extremely versatile".

"Certainly, Commander. Should I assume that you prefer the standard chrome, black and red colour scheme given your previous selection?"

"Oh dear Earth, EDI – you're better than a gun store. Yes, I would like that. Can you fabricate a sniper rifle too? I need a… let's have an N7 Valiant, the standard model. I can optimise it later and calibrate the scope myself. Do you have enough material for that?"

"Certainly, Commander. We have additional nineteen pounds of fabrication alloys in stock. Would you like me to fabricate additional weaponry for you? I notice that you have yet to request a pistol or a submachine gun, and given the weapons you carried when coming aboard this vessel that would be your next request".

"EDI, you are fantastic". There seemed to be some perks to working in the private sector after all. Damn it, this was the coolest thing he had come across since he had faced that Geth armature back on Therum.

"Thank you, Commander. I exist to serve".

"Get me an N7 Eagle pistol of the '77 model and a N7 Hurricane submachine gun of any model. Fabricate all the weapons in the order of which I have mentioned them. ETA on all of that?"

"Seventy six hours until fabrication is complete, and an additional three hours to give the last firearm time to cool down before use. We are ninety two hours out of Omega Station".

"Excellent". Oh, yes – this was how it was supposed to be! Now, if only he could get that damn Cerberus operative to work the stick out of her perfectly sculpted ass things would be as good as they could feasibly be. "EDI, where should I put my armour? Is there a locker around here or something-"

"There is an armour locker in your private cabin, Commander. There you can store your armour and repair it using a retractable workbench with robotic helper arms. You can also repaint any armour you get".

"Fantastic" Shepard grinned. Well, it seemed like things were looking on the up-and-up.

* * *

"Did you have to paint your helmet with that… monstrosity?" Miranada spoke as they waited for the charge to be sounded in the depths of Omega's Kima district, standing in group yet slightly apart from the other mercenary freelancers hired by the Blue Suns, Eclipse and Bloodpack coalition to help them take down Archangel. It had been Shepard's plan, getting to Archangel under the guise of being one of the people out for his head, and she had to admit that the plan had some merit – though his current situation outweighed any merit she might have perceived.

"What? You don't like the paintjob on my helmet?" Shepard wondered gleefully, a little giddy before the battle started. His armour, painted black and red and detailed in white in the standard N7 pattern, clashed against the skintight uniforms of Jacob and Miranda where they stood beside him, and he had accentuated the effect by putting on his rebreather helmet – a helmet he had decorated with a painting of the face of a burning human skull.

"It looks silly" she protested, still a little annoyed at the man after he had introduced himself to the mercenary recruiter as "Jack Archer, the baddest dude in all the Verse" and the two of his squad members as his "Servants/sex slaves – can't you tell by the uniforms?". "It is very much over the top, and not very inconspicuous".

"I'm supposed to look like a merc, remember?" he argued while Jacob stood by the side, hoping not to be noticed by the bickering two. "I'll paint it over once we're back on the Normandy. But these people" he jerked his head at the mercenaries around them in their motley armour and scavenged piecemeal weaponry "don't respect military people. They go by theatrics and bravado. So yeah, I have to look like this. It's kind of cool, though? Yes?"

"No" she shot back.

"Not at all, sir" Jacob provided from aside.

"Yee of little faith" he shook his helmeted head and looked up ahead as the signal was sounded for the freelancer mercenaries to charge over the barricades of the district and assault the headquarters of the Archangel vigilante. Archangel was all alone now, his squad destroyed and his support torn away from out under him, and he was making his last stand in his last safe house, picking off his enemies from a distance with fearsome tech powers and high-precision sniper-rifle shots. He fought just like Garrus, Shepard noted internally… but surely… no! This was not the time for such ponderings. "Right" he nodded to the other two and unslung his new assault rifle from its rest upon his back, loving the heft of it. "Let's go get ourselves another member, squad!"

"Aye aye, sir!" Jacob confirmed while Miranda merely nodded as both of them brought forth their pistols, ready for the close quarter's combat that was sure to follow in the cramped rooms of Archangel's base, and in the rearmost position of the troop they followed, leaping over the barricades to follow the rest of the mercenaries towards the Kima district former warehouse turned apartment turned impromptu fortress. Archangel's headquarters lay across a bridge spanning a massive run-off canal, a funnel that had been feeding mercenaries to his fortress like meat through a grinder, and it was only by the end of the bridge, when they were out of range of the guns of the mercs beyond the barricade, that Shepard gave the signal for him and his squad to reveal their true natures. A concussive blast shot by Archangel bouncing off the neck of his armour in an almost pointed way that made him dazed and caused him to stumble before he managed to give the command.

This wasn't the only part of the plan. Shepard was no fool, and he knew that when they were across that bridge and fetched Archangel they would have to get back over it. So his little squad had, on his insistence, been snoping around the mercenary installation and camp beyond the barricades for the hours until the charge was sounded, sabotaging equipment, demoralising the other mercs by loudly discussing how many men Archangel had killed, and, by grace of Miranda's great skill with hacking and bypassing blocking computer software, reprogrammed a heavy mech they had found in one storage room to target all it saw upon activation and deployment, essentially turning it on its masters. They had laid the ground work – but still Shepard knew that this would still be a bloody battle.

Not that it seemed that way at first.

When confronting the raging mercenaries and attacking them from behind with a near surgical blast of force their loose formation, rag-tag and ineffectual as it already was, gave way and fell helplessly back to take cover within the walls of Archangel's safe house. The place had obviously been some sort of an apartment, Shepard noticed as he and Miranda and Jacob stormed in through the hacked doors and began tearing apart the freelancer formation. The main floor seemed to be possessed of one larger living and kitchen area, which they were busy blasting apart, and a connecting sitting area with attached bedroom and ensuite bathroom, but the windows were small, narrow or otherwise blocked and the angles sharp and allowing for much cover, making the entire room near perfect for the purpose of being a safehouse. The stairs in the rear of the room led up to an upper level with several more bedrooms and sitting areas, making for a sort of gallery on the upper level from which one could easily deal death on any invaders. It wasn't a fortress, granted, he had to admit that – but it was as good as you were going to get in the civilian sector.

This was easy, Shepard reflected as the three of them took out most of the mercs with only biotic powers and concussive rounds and blasts, doing as little damage as they could to poor men and women who had been persuaded into foolishness by the promise of easy money. A little too easy. With the urge to show off to the two under his command he took of the helmet they had so disliked and held it in his hand, counting on his kinetic barriers to keep his head safe from attack. "We used to play volleyball aboard the SSV Everest" he mused as he bounced his helmet in his hand a few times, thinking back to simpler days as he singled out a running mercenary on the far side of the main room. "Think fast!" he shouted, tossed the helmet high into the air and used just a hint of biotic power as he slammed it with his other hand, sending the helmet crashing through the air and straight into the head of that human, making him slide along the floor and hit a bookshelf with a loud thud. "Still got it".

"Blessed be!" Miranda muttered as that hideous helmet was finally done away with and the last two mercs were downed by Jacob, and nodding Shepard waved at them and headed for the stairs at the rear of the safehouse main floor, leading the other two behind him.

Over the bodies of the dead infiltration team they stormed into the room, lowering their weapons as Archangel sat just little distance further away. Leaning against the railing of a shattered window the slayer of mercenaries was crouching, visored eyes gazing coldly down the scope of his sniper rifle, calmly lining his prey up for the kill. "Archangel?" Shepard spoke to summon his attention, to which the sniper held up a single finger to usher calm, focused his aim again before he pulled the trigger, resulting in the last straggler kneeling over with half of his head taken away by the force of the shot. And then the Archangel of Omega, the sole avenging angel trapped in hell, stood form his perch and looked up at them, reaching up to take off his helmet.

"Shepard". That voice – disbelieving, relieved, strained and pushed to the max – despite the flanging he knew to whom that voice belonged. "I thought you were dead".

"Garrus!" he exclaimed, overjoyed, to which Miranda and Jacob looked to each other in slight confusion and great reproach. "What're you doing here?"

"Just keeping my skills sharp" came the answer in an attempt to quip as the former comrade of Shepard's sank down on a nearby chair, so tired and worn down to the bone that he could hardly muster any joy in seeing his friend once again – a friend he had thought was dead. "A little target practice".

"You okay?" Shepard said, approaching the Turian and putting his hand on his armoured shoulder, the black and blue once standard issue C-Sec armour now pitted and scarred and shattered in places, his kinetic barriers blasted away to a near-nothing.

"Been better" he looked up at Shepard and angled his mandibles, the Turian equivalent of a weak smile. "But it sure is good to see a friendly face. Killing mercs is hard work…" he paused for the longest time and when he did continue his tone was much, much darker "especially on your own".

"What happened to your squad?" Shepard wondered, knowing from the Cerberus dossier that Archangel had run a team of specialist from all over the Terminus systems in their fight against the mercenary bands that all but ran Omega. "When did you start calling yourself Archangel?"

"Dead, to a one, all of my men" Garrus coughed, the situation having worn on him and his health despite his lack of serious wounds. "And the name's just a name. Something the locals gave me for all my _good deeds_ " no, his tone wasn't simply tired and stymied but bitter, something Shepard would never have associated with the idealistic but tough C-Sec agent that had joined his crusade against Saren.

"Commander" Miranda cleared her voice by the window, making the two look up to where she was indicating. "It seems that the mercenaries are moving back in on us. How do we proceed?"

"That bridge out there has saved my life, funnelling all those witless idiots into scope" he said as he stood from his seat and went towards the windows to which Miranda had moved during the reunion of the two old friends. "But… it works both ways. They'll slaughter us if we try to get out that way. This place has held them off so far. And with the three of you… I say we hold this location until we see an opening in their defences or worn the fight out of them".

"Then we hold this bunker and wait them out" Shepard agreed readily, unholstering his assault rifle readily. "Defence formation Tanabe it is". A stray shot fired from the advancing mercenary formation strayed into the room and snapped them all to action, the squad and Archangel dashing for the cover of the balcony railing and hunkering down as they began to return fire in bursts. "How'd you manage to piss off every major merc organisation in the Terminus systems?" Shepard wondered as they hunkered down to dodge the suppressive fire sent their way by the mercenary advance.

"It wasn't easy!" Garrus informed before he popped out of cover for an instant to take aim, fire and then drop down again in what seemed like one fluid motion, almost supernatural in his accuracy. "I really had to work at it" he said then to Shepard as they kept out of the fire. "I'm amazed that they all teamed up to fight me. They must really hate me". He snuck a peek over the wall and noted the enemy positions before he looked back to his old commander. "You remember the Geth installations on the way to that cloning facility on Virmire?"

"You, me and Tali taking on the west wings of the gates while the other three took out the east wings and Kaidan gave suppressive fire from the MAKO?" Garrus nodded, and Shepard agreed with a smirk. "Lawson! Taylor! On my mark you start taking pot-shots on the advancing mercs! Garrus and I will lay down the law!" The Turian, as they spoke, exchanged his sniper rifle for an assault rifle of the Vindicator model and readied it as Shepard unslung his new assault rifle. "Now!" he shouted and as one the four went out of cover, Shepard and Garrus shooting blindly into the mass of advancing mercs and mechs while Miranda picked the exposed enemies off from the flanks. Under the sudden burst of heavy shooting and death amongst their ranks the Eclipse troops fell back, leaving only stragglers behind to what agent Vakarian once had called 'Turian mercy' as Garrus once again switched to his sniper rifle.

"Dammit!" Garrus cursed as his rifle overloaded with a hiss after a near dozen shots, the thermal clips within it spent and smoking. "Shepard, would you kindly hand me that human sniper rifle?" he asked and pointed to Shepard without a look as he discarded his own rifle, taking the human firearm without another word. "Why are you carrying a sniper rifle anyway? You couldn't hit the bulkhead of a ship you were standing inside of".

"Well, since the two people in my squad are two pyjamas-wearing Cerberus biotics who only use pistols – or a shotgun or a submachine gun if I ask them very nicely – I needed to have someone laying down some support" he shrugged as Garrus picked up the rifle and shouldered the stock, holding a little uncomfortably as it was not designed for use by Turians, and took aim, firing three times before popping the thermal clip and shoving in another one. He gave Shepard a harsh look that the human found the most perplexing. "What?"

"Where is the damn recoil?" the Turian wondered sharply and looked down the scope once again. "This rifle must have a recoil dampener of some sort. You squishy carapace-lacking humans must prefer it that way, but without compensating for recoil I can't properly double-tap. And what's with the three shots? I feel this rifle is being as impactful as a Salarian tourist".

"I'll just take it back then" Shepard grumbled and reached for the rifle, which Garrus held out of his reach pointedly before he settled to keep firing at the now regrouping mercs, their ranks bolstered by the arrival of the main Eclipse forces. "See? Don't knock this piece of fine human craftsmanship".

"Pah! If I only had a Krysae rifle or maybe a Phaeston I'd upshow your 'human craftsmanship'". As the mercenaries began to form up and resume their charge, reinforced by Eclipse troops from beyond the barricade, his quipping and joking ceased and his mood became stern. "Shepard, could you perhaps head down to the main level?"

"Sure thing. You just stay up here and keep safe, Garrus" Shepard nodded and signalled Jacob and Miranda, who moved in low crouches towards stairs as not to be hit by stray gunfire from the attackers approaching the safehouse.

"I'll stay up here" the Turian confirmed. "I can do a lot of damage from this vantage point. You… you can do what you do best".

"Wrex shit up?" Shepard grinned at his friend and comrade.

"Wrex shit up" Garrus nodded and sent Shepard on his way.

Charging back down the stairs Shepard, Jacob and Miranda went to hold the bridge against the assault of the oncoming Eclipse mercenaries and their auxiliary combat mechs and drones and sentry turrets. It seemed that the organisation that so often was focused on providing a vast array of different skills and powers to any field of battle rather than ferocity like the Blood Pack or the great discipline and relentless obedience of the Blue Suns fielded primarily regular soldiers and tech experts on Omega, which was almost a disappointment to Shepard. He could rarely go all out in battle except against another biotic – but as time wore on and the assault didn't seem to end he regretted the noting of ever having thought such a thing. Surely anything was preferable to such relentless carnage… but the charge seemed to stymie somewhat as –

"Shepard!" Garrus's voice hissed into the Commander's earpiece, the Turian having almost effortlessly piggybacked onto and hacked into the squad's radio frequency. "The proximity alarms on the lower levels are lighting up like Liara on Batarian ale. Blood Pack infiltrators most likely. Could you perhaps go down there and" a gunshot was heard as Archangel took out another target "take care of things? Maybe shut the service tunnel bulkheads and seal the hatches?"

Shepard, making a snap decision, looked to his two squadmates and quickly decided which one of them would complement Garrus's combat doctrine the best. "Jacob, you stay up here and keep pulling the hostiles into the open! Lawson and I will take care of the lower level hatches!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" Jacob nodded and hurried towards the front entrance of the safehouse, bending down and scooping up a discarded assault rifle of a piecemeal Batarian model that he shouldered and subsequently used to hold off the assault, using biotic pulls and pushes and throws to bring troublesome attackers within the line of fire of Garrus's new sniper rifle. Shepard, turning to Miranda, rushed towards the rear doors as she followed, down towards the basement of the safehouse with operative in tow, the levels dark and dank and the water and refrigeration pipes dripping yellowed moisture down onto their heads. "Keep your wits about you, Lawson – the Blood Pack deploy Vorcha, Varren and even Krogans. Stay in the back and provide me support".

"No charging straight into the thick of it, Commander?" Miranda wondered as they came around a corner and spotted a pair of now surprised Vorcha sappers, the vanguard of the main assault, which they swiftly downed with a few bursts of shots from their respective automatic weapons. "It's unlike you".

"I'm actually not crazy, no matter what Taylor keeps saying" he quipped back as they went down another hallways until they came onto a large open area from which three tunnels split. "Only an idiot engages Krogans in hand-to-hand when they're not their best, and despite all the working out I've done with Jacob these last few days I'm definitely not there yet".

"Vorcha can be pretty savage too, I've heard. All fang and claw" Miranda said as she dropped the bulkhead of the centre service tunnel, Shepard standing watch and giving suppressive fire to hold back the Varren that were charging down it during the ten second delay before the plating dropped and shut them off from the outside. "What is 'defence formation Tanabe'?"

"My old commander in the 103rd, Major Campbell, was the biggest closet history buff you'd ever meet" Shepard said as they went down the leftmost tunnel, walking slowly and keeping intent watch as they went. "She'd name all our formations and tactical moves after famous historical battles back on Earth. Fraustadt for the battle outside of Warsaw in the sixteen hundreds, Alessia for one of Caesar's great victories, Cannae for Hannibal's greatest triumph – stuff like that. Most of them were just variations on trying to encircle the enemy, but they differ in the fine points".

"And Tanabe?" she asked, uncertain, having never heard of that particular battle ever before.

"It's one of the smaller battles in the interlude to Sekigahara, the deciding battle of the Sengoku Jidai" he spoke as he leant around another corner and saw nothing down that tunnel, advancing warily with Typhoon assault rifle held high before him so that the face plate protected him should he come under fire. "Five hundred men under Hosokawa Tadaoki held the fortress of Tanabe against the Ishida-allied northern army of fifteen thousand. Two months they held that position, allowing Tokugawa Ieyasu to win against Ishida's other forces and become Shōgun of Japan".

"What happened to the men at Tanabae?" Miranda wondered, bewildered by this sudden and hidden depth of a man she had thought to be nothing but a military grunt favoured by fate and fortune.

"Dead to the last man" he replied more than a little grimly. "Essentially, it means that you follow orders and stay put unless told otherwise. You hold your position until you win or you die".

"Why not just use Thermopylae instead?" she had gotten the finest education credits could buy as a youth and thus knew plenty about a variety of topics, including military history. "It's more famous-"

"Yeah, because it's commonly thought as western tradition standing tall against an eastern infection" his tone was surprisingly venomous as he spoke about that as they slowly made their way towards the bulkhead up ahead. "Bullshit. The Persians were diverse, outlawed slavery – unlike the Greeks – and would have offered centralised government to a fractured and savage Hellas. And the Spartans were the cruellest and most psychotic sons of bitches in existence. Besides, what's more impressive: seven thousand holding for three days until Leonidas told them to stop cramping his style so he could die all noble and shit, or five hundred holding for two months for the honour of their true lord and master? And also, Thermopylae is a lot harder to say when a Batarian slaver is trying to stick a grenade up your ass".

"Huh" Miranda said as she stopped and stared at Shepard, her perfectly curved eyebrows furrowing her pale and unwrinkled brow.

"What?" he looked back to her. "Do I have something on my face?"

"You're…" Miranda spoke reluctantly, hesitant and amazed all at once. "You're a lot more intelligent than I thought, Shepard".

"I'm not sure if I'm flattered or insulted" he narrowed his eyes her way as he thought it over before he shrugged and let it go. "We should, uhm, probably get to closing those hatches. Garrus is taking a lot of fire up there, and we shouldn't let him sweat more than he absolutely needs to. Or whatever it is that Turians do instead of sweating".

"Shepard!" came the hiss through the communicator a little later as the Commander and his XO stood pressed against the sides of the main bulkhead, Shepard trying to hold back a Vorcha assault squad with nothing but a few grenades and the furry of his Typhoon rifle while Miranda was busy holding a Krogan berserker suspended in the air with a biotic stasis. "The Eclipse scum are deploying a heavy mech! Get yourself up here, now!"

"Relax, Garrus" Shepard went as the bulkhead slid shut before him and Miranda, cutting off the sounds of gunfire and chaos and ending the battle abruptly, leaving the two of them panting with unreleased energy. "I had Lawson hack that thing before we went in here. Let's just say that it's going to be mining for gold inside the mercs' heads. They'll never know what hit them".

"You know, you don't have to call me Lawson all the time" Miranda went as they headed for the final access tunnel, one that lay past a large vehicle hangar and work area that would soon be flooded with Blood Pack troops. "You called me Miranda on Freedom's Progress. Why not now?"

"Only if you call me Shepard" he muttered and scratched his chin. "Well, back then you had just saved my life and looked all sexy and powerful and stuff" Shepard shrugged as they stood in the doorway to that hangar, surveying the battlefield and the Vorcha formation slowing going through the open bulkhead in the back of the garage. "Oh" he said, realising what words he had just spoken, casting a look at the now staring Miranda as a slight embarrassed blush came into his sweat and blood-streaked cheeks. "I said that out loud. Dammit".

"Keep it professional, Shepard" she shook her head slowly at him, not admitting even to herself that the thought of attraction towards the commander was more than just a little bit… _interesting_. "Focus on the fighting, okay?"

"Right. Killing mercs and kicking ass. That I can do" Shepard nodded and reached for his grenade baldric, realising that he had only two left with a start. "Alright… Miranda, you take this one" he handed her one of the explosive devices. "Just pull the pin and toss it. It's incendiary, and I set it to explode on impact. On my mark we throw these things into the thick of their formation, wait three seconds, I charge in and do my best Wrex impression and you cover me. Watch my back, okay?"

"Of course, Shepard" she said and did just that as he turned his back to her, looking hard out that doorway, and she could see that the armour he wore had seemingly been perfectly sculpted for his muscular posterior – a view that she discovered to her horror that she enjoyed. Clearing her head with a vigorous shake she chastised herself for losing her head in this precarious situation. It would not happen again.

She was wrong in that – though she wouldn't know it until later.

"Now!" Shepard cried, and in perfect sync, acting in perfect unison by instinct more than anything else, they each threw a grenade into the centre of the Vorcha and Varren formation, instantly making it burst into napalm-enhanced green and blue flame. Counting down in his head Shepard gathered biotic energy around his legs and hands and pulled out his shotgun, holstering his assault rifle on his back before charging with a wordless battle-cry roar. He slammed into that now shredded and weakened and burning formation with a mighty crash, sending a few Vorch off their feet and into their brethren and their Varren and even slamming into walls. Miranda followed after in a hurry, using overload protocols and warping and lifting and stasis biotic attacks to make sure Shepard wasn't swamped, and in the end the two of them were the only ones standing, Shepard's shotgun smoking but not yet overheated as he popped in a spare thermal clip he found on one of the dead.

They managed to close that bulkhead too, but with some difficulty – despite Shepard taking the brunt of the Blood Pack assault the shots fired at them even managed to break through Miranda's kinetic barriers once or twice, grazing her and opening scratches in her cat-suit. Shepard received cracks in his armour, but otherwise he was fine when the bulkhead went down and his biotic barriers went back up as he recovered. The peace, though, was not to last.

The elite mercs of the Blood Pack, the three Krogan in the main guard and their retinue of the twelve most savage Vorcha in the entire organisation, had charged over the bridge despite Garrus's and Jacob's best efforts to keep them at bay, and though they managed to take most of them out the leader, Jorgal Garm, managed to get through. He was currently on the top floor of the safehouse, the two desperately struggling to hold him at bay.

Shepard and Miranda, having forced themselves to push aside their tired states, burst into the room with guns blazing just as Garm, roaring curses in the royal speech of Tuchanka's main continent, was barrelling down on Garrus. A slug striking the Krogan Battlemaster in the brow-plate made him roar and divert his full attention towards Shepard who had fired with his Crusader shotgun, charging at him with biotics and Krogan bloodrage burning in the air around him.

In the end they managed to bring him down, though not easily. Shepard's Crusader was knocked out of his hands and off into the distance, Miranda's both pistols overheated, and Jacob all but broke an arm, but in the end they managed to kill the fiend by all converging on him and holding him down as Garrus emptied an entire thermal clip's worth of shots right into his eyes. "Ah!" Garrus sighed loudly as he sank down on a chair on the top floor, his carapace plates fiendishly hot. "You're kicking ass Shepard – they barely touched me! Your squad's pretty good".

"You took down the mech before alright?" he panted back, supporting his weary back on now shaking knees. "I think the Eclipse's leader was called… Jaroth or something…"

"Me and your fellow human here took out that mech after the Eclipse had almost done the work for us" Garrus went and gestured vaguely Jacob's way where the former marine was slouched down on the floor, sweating and streaked with dirt and blood after much hard and savage fighting. "And we took out Jaroth in the process. Jaroth, and now that freak Garm… you're making my day".

"There is something on this datapad, Commander" Miranda said as she scavenged over the downed Krogan's body, pulling a small computer interface from the creature's inner armour pockets. "It's a message, from Jaroth of the Eclipse-"

"The guy I killed?" Garrus asked little smugly but still tired, still wary, still bitter and resigned.

"Percisely" Miranda nodded and read the message, noting the contents of the message with hardly a draw of the lip or any sort of registration of information on an emotional level, cold and calculating once again. "' _Assuming this operation is successful, we can count on high morale and extensive buy-in from the men. From the losses we've already taken, possibility exists that we won't have the men needed to continue on to the next objective. It's clear, though that none of our organizations would be ready to move on Aria without the assistance of the other two_ '." She looked up at Garrus. "They seemed to have intended on moving on Aria, the kingpin of Omega".

"She'll probably give me a mountain of credits for killing their sorry selves, then" Garrus noted and nodded. "Perhaps… no, I've had more than enough of this station. I'll come along with you gladly Shepard, no matter what the mission is".

"That's great, Garrus. When we were heading up the bridge you nailed me good, by the way" Shepard noted as he just about wanted to sink down and fall helplessly to the floor. Damn it, this was a lot of fighting. For how long had they… it felt like hours, at the very least.

"Concussive rounds only" Garrus confirmed tiredly, almost sleeping on the spot but trying to keep himself awake as he knew that the Blue Suns hadn't made their move yet. "I wasn't trying to hurt you, but I needed to get you moving. It worked, didn't it? As soon as I shot you you gave the command to-" Garrus suddenly shot wide awake and tapped his small targeting visor. "I'm getting nothing from the proximity alarms. Communications are being disrupted. The Blue Suns must've-"

A dull thudding sound, the sound of a gunship rising from the depths of Omega, began to fill the air, and suddenly crashing shattered the peace around the group as what seemed like a whole army of mercenaries, in blue and white armour all, repelled down the sides of the building from the levels above using heavy metal cables and crashed in through the windows all around them, guns blazing. As the squad and Archangel dashed for cover the gunship they had heard rose to be level with the top floor of the safehouse and, in a disregard for the lives of his men that made Shepard sick to the very core with disgust, began firing regardless, dead set on trying to wipe Archangel from the face of the galaxy.

Miranda, having now no viable weapons, hung back as the other three kept fighting off the oncoming mercenary assault and focused her efforts on the gunship piloted by the leader of the Blue Suns on Omega, Tarak, peppering his gunship with overloading protocols and scrambling its targeting system with an overload of junk data, hacking into its systems as fast as her Omni-tool allowed. Her fingers seemed to be nothing but a blur as fast as she was coding, and she had to use almost all of her combat hacking skills just to give them a fighting stance against the brobdinagian machine. As the gunship dropped out of sight to reconfigure its systems Miranda looked up to find the mercenaries still advancing but now much fewer in number, led by a human woman with dully red hair toting some sort of assault rifle.

Her amps now nice and cool after not having used them in the good eight minutes she had spent taking the gunship out of commission Miranda charged up her biotics and went out of cover, dashing to the side of Shepard as she simultaneously used a biotic pull on that commanding woman, hurtling her through the air and slamming her into the wall behind Shepard with a heavy thud. The woman, limp and definitely unconscious, didn't react when Miranda took her pistol for herself, handing the assault rifle she had been toting to Shepard who promptly tossed it Garrus's way, relying instead on his trusty new Typhoon with the underslung grenade launcher and the attached bayonet.

But at the end of the charge, at the head of the last wave, they sent in the heavy infantry.

"Take this!" Shepard gruffed at Miranda and handed the Typhoon assault rifle to her as he saw one very specific kind of Batarian soldier repelling down the side of the building and bursting into the room along with the others, one whose blue and white armour was lined with serrated blades and massive spikes. "Use the grenade launcher to take out the gunship. I know Garrus has some grenades in the back room. And stay alive".

Batarian Brawlers were some of the toughest hand-to-hand fighters in the galaxy, as they were often the fittest and strongest and most physically skilled and inclined in a warrior culture that had always put emphasis on brute strength and ferocity. That brutal combat doctrine, coupled with biotic prowess often on par with an Asari Commando, made any Batarian Brawler – or Shakta'Hhaan, Blood Dancers, in their own language – a fierce opponent, especially at close range. Shepard had first faced them when defending Elysium from slavers during the Skyllian Blitz, then on mass during the assault on Torfan, and his practice of using biotics to enhance his physical abilities had been inspired by those warriors in part, an inspiration only realised when he had fought alongside the Krogan Battlemaster Wrex. He hadn't fought a Brawler since – and as he faced down that man across the room he grinned savagely.

This was the best test of his abilities and new amps he could feasibly think of. "Miranda, Jacob – give Garrus cover and keep the brutes off his back! This one's too much for you to handle!" he shouted. Gathering his biotics around himself in a glowing flood, the blue dark energy pooling around his feet and whirling around his fists, he cracked his gauntleted fingers and set off against that looming warrior in Blue Suns armour. And the Brawler responded in turn, his spiked and jagged armour turning to face Shepard as he pushed the other mercs to the side and set off in his own biotic charge, using a low shelf as springboard to propel himself into the air even as the furniture was crushed beneath his feet.

Shepard leapt high into the air, trying to match the Batarian's height and force as they hurtled towards each other. For a moment, a fraction of a second, Shepard's bright eyes met the Batarian's black stare, and an understanding passed between them – an understanding like only warriors about to engage in a battle to the death with each other could reach. Instinctive, hateful, respectful, steely – it was all of those things. And then it was over as they slammed together.

The bladed and spiked armour of the Brawler would have shredded Shepard had he been armoured and unprotected by kinetic barriers, but he still packed a mean punch. As the two clashed the Batarian, being rested and fresh to the battle, had the upper hand, and by his force they were thrown into the far wall, and through it, tumbling off the top floor and slamming into the main floor with a heavy thud.

Struggling to get the upper hand Shepard lashed out with a kick swirling with biotic power, blasting the Batarian off of him but didn't damage him due to the strength of his barriers, and rose and took a breather before the enraged Brawler charged again. He dodged to the side, blocking a few of the Batarian's thunderous strikes with his forearms until he parried the arms to the side and lashing out with another kick. The foe tore himself free and jumped back, making the kick miss, the biotic shockwave produced by it charging through the air of the room and crushing a far wall into scattered debris. As they two dodged away from each other a massive explosion rocked the top floor of the building, sending dust and debris falling from the ceiling, and Shepard cursed. He was hearing nothing over the com, the communications broken by the Blue Suns interference. All silent up there. He hoped that his people were alright.

Grunting and snarling that Batarian pulled out a heavy trenchknife from his boot and adopted a fighting stance as Shepard settled back, moving lightly on the balls of his feet despite his armour. He had trained for situations just like this, after all. The Brawler charged, knife slashing from on high, and Shepard, tired and wan, struggled to block both that strike and the following five, looking for any means of getting the drop on his enemy as his pistol and submachine gun clattered at his hips with every dodge – of course! He went on the offensive, striking thrice again and gripping the knifebearing wrist with his free hand, locking himself into position with the Batarian as he pulled his submachine gun from his hip and aimed it right at the Brawler's gut.

He blasted away, spending the entire thermal clip until the pistol was overheated and useless without doing much damage other than the last few shots going through the kinetic barriers and bouncing near uselessly off his armour – but that was all he needed it to do: weaken the brute's kinetic barriers. Dropping the gun to the floor he gathered a mass of biotic power into his fist, as much as he could muster in a single strike, and then struck forwards with explosive intent. His own barriers were still up and strong, recharged after the hellish fighting down in the lower levels, and they almost glowed around his gauntlet as he struck with all his might, his hand striking hard into the Batarian's armour's chest plate with a dull boom and a loud snapping crack. Gurgling, his lips near liquidised by the force of Shepard's blow, the Brawler fell to the floor along with his knife, beaten and broken.

Downing his enemy Shepard straddled him and gathered all the biotic power he had left into his fist, holding the Brawler down by his other hand wrapped around his throat. "Good fight" the Batarain managed to growl despite its crushed lungs, and Shepard agreed with a panting nod before he slammed his biotically charged fist down on the alien's head, reducing it into a gory red and grey paste on the floor of the safehouse, blood splattering hot, slick and utterly disgusting over Shepard's face and armour. Standing then, panting and stumbling and tired out of his mind, he made his way up the stairs to the top floor that had now falling strangely silent. And what he saw there… terrified him.

"Joker! Send someone, anyone!" Jacob snapped into his communicator as he conversed with the Normandy, Miranda by his side crouched over the downed Garrus who had seemed to have taken a missile straight to right side of his body, the woman applying Medi-gel with an expression of fierce frustration on her face as she worked. "He's dying over here-"

As Shepard went to the Turian's side Garrus took a sharp intake of breath and reached for the barrel of his discarded sniper rifle, dazed, in pain and in critical condition but alive. "Stay with me Garrus!" Shepard all but barked as he took one canister from Miranda and began applying it with trembling fingers to his friend's blasted apart mandible and face. "Hold on!"

But, struggle as he may, the Turian couldn't keep conscious, and darkness flooded his world.

* * *

"Commander, we've done what we could for Garrus". Jacob's words came out slowly and tiredly as he, along with Shepard, Miranda and Shepard's Yeoman Kelly were being debriefed twenty six ship-side hours after the battle of Kima district, Jacob's face still scratched and bruised after the blast that had knocked him and Garrus down – Garrus more permanently so. The only reason they were alive was because of Miranda, who had managed to down the gunship with a few precisely fired grenades to its cockpit, sending it plummeting into the black depths of Omega where not even Aria, ruler of the station, dared the tread, and then taken control of the situation, ordering Jacob to radio Jacob as she tended to the critically wounded Turian. "But he took a bad hit, sir. The doc's correcting the damage with extensive surgical procedures and some cybernetics. Best we can tell he'll have full functionality, but-"

"Shepard" said a distinctive flanging voice from the doorway, and the four humans looked up to see the Turian standing there like nothing was amiss, his armoured now even more pitted than before and the entire lower right side of his face secured with a supportive bandage and a cybernetic heat regulator for adjusting to his bodily temperature. His mandibles, especially on the right side of his face, were scratched down to the flesh and freshly pink like a baby Turian's – but he was up and about already, and gave Shepard the equivalent of a smile as he entered the briefing room.

"Huh" Jacob chuckled, impressed, the Turian having already earned both his and Miranda's respects for his actions. "Tough son of a bitch. Didn't think you'd be up yet".

"Takes more than that, Jacob. Give it to me straightforwardly, Shepard" the Turian spoke slowly and a little tenderly. "None of them want to tell me how bad it looks, and nobody wants to give me a mirror".

To Miranda's surprise Shepard began to grin as if intent on joking. "Hell, you were always ugly, Garrus" he drawled and bobbed his head. "Slap some face-paint on there and no one would even notice". Was he… was he verbally abusing his own squad mates? That couldn't be good for morale, not at all.

"Heh!" the Turian chuckled but seemed to wince and twist his head to the side for an instant. "Don't make me laugh! Dammit, my face is barely holding together as it is". Garrus stepped up to the briefing table and place his hands on it as he leant at it. "Though this might be a good thing. Women were always ignoring you and hitting on me. At least now you might score a hit – figuratively of course. You're still an awful shot".

"And you're not brave enough to take a Geth prime down from up close" Shepard taunted.

"Of course I'm not. That would just be suicidal, and stupid – and I'm not stupid. But I am going to be getting more attention from Krogan women from now on" he said as Jacob saluted, his report complete, and stepped from the room after Shepard had given him an approving nod. "Frankly" said he, casting a look at Kelly and Miranda "I'm a little more worried about you. _Cerberus_ , Shepard. You remember those sick experiments they were doing?"

"That's why I'm glad you're here, Garrus" he said to the Turian, speaking just as severely as his friend did. "Fighting the Collectors… I'm walking into hell, and I want someone I trust on my side".

"You do realise that this plan has me walking into hell along with you?" Garrus remarked, satisfied with knowing that his old comrade hadn't changed from his old ways. "Heh. Just like old times".

"Garrus, I need someone to check out the Normandy's forward battery" Shepard urged, now less serious, more exploring of the options that lay ahead of him. "This is Miranda Lawson, my Chief of Staff and Executive Officer" he pointed to the women by the side of the table "and Kelly Chambers, my Yeoman and assistant. You've already met Armoury Chief Jacob Taylor. Effected immediately I'm promoting you to the position of Gunnery Officer".

"Oh, a promotion _and_ big guns" Garrus chuckled gingerly, trying not to move his mandibles too much as he spoke. "You know just how to make my day, Shepard – rocket to the face non-withstanding. I'll be in the forward battery if you need me. I'm sure your human guns could use some" a certain honest glee filled his voice at the prospect "calibration".

"You can't go wrong, Garrus" Shepard nodded at him with a grin. "Dismissed". The Turian gave Shepard the legionary salute – right fist pointing to the left, thumb pointing upwards, as he held it over the centre of his breastplate – before he too grinned and turned, marching out of the room with a practiced military ease. "Your thoughts, Miranda?" Shepard didn't even have to look at her to feel her disproval, and he was afraid that every gain he had made with her during the previous mission had been undone with that single decision.

"I'm not so sure about letting an outsider gain access to our most advanced weapons technology" she spoke slowly, considering every word "but it is obvious that he is loyal to you. Turians are notoriously honourable, and I doubt that he would betray you". It seemed the ball was still up in the air whether or not she believed that Shepard would betray Cerberus, but it seemed that he was getting some leeway with her. And, Shepard reflected as he looked her over in her skin-tight suit, he would not mind getting more than just leeway with – _no_! He slapped himself inwardly. _Bad Shepard! No consorting with the enemy!_

"It seems that the location of one of our other potential recruits has changed, Commander" Kelly supplied from aside and reviewed the information on the datapad clutched in her arms like a babe. "The prison ship Purgatory has moved from the Faryar system to the Osun system in the Hourglass Nebula, just a single relay jump away. Do you want to pursue that recruit instead of staying at Omega?"

"Negative, Chambers" Shepard shook his head and considered the matter. "We get the other two recruits here before we go get… was it the insane and murderous biotic we were getting on the Purgatory?" A nod came in confirmation, and he nodded in turn. "Good. We'll go there after these next two recruits, Solus and Massani, and then we'll go back to the Omega Nebula and get that Asari from that peripheral system. We'll see after that".

"Of course, Commander" Kelly nodded and flashed him a bright smile before leaving the room, going no doubt to tell Joker that they weren't going anywhere any time soon and that he would have to resign himself to boredom a little longer while they were docked with Omega – leaving Shepard once more alone with Miranda.

"You did very well down there, Shepard" Miranda noted slightly as she put both hands on the desk and leant in over it just like him – though he found the view she provided much more tantalising that a mirror image of himself would have been. "It was a rough situation, but you came through, and when a dangerous threat occurred you risked your own life rather than having us face fire while low on ammunition".

"The Blood Dancer?" he wondered, to which she nodded with a slightly bewildered frown. "That's what those were called. You don't spend five years of your career doing almost nothing but fighting Batarians without picking up some knowledge about their culture".

"Layers upon layers, Shepard" she remarked, impressed. "History, intelligence, respect for your foes… How deep and complicated of a man are you?"

"I'm a very simple man with very simple needs" he quipped back, to which she smiled slightly in her trademark way. Damn it… she was beautiful. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. "You did very well too, Miranda. You saved the day, more or less, and you kept one of my best friends alive. I owe you for that".

"Enough for you to trust me?" she wondered and leant away from the table, supporting herself on it with one arm and an angle so that her hair tumbled off her shoulders and hung low and shining in the stark light of the briefing room. She was walking on air, and she knew it. Facing odds like that and coming out without even a single casualty for it… it made you want to seize life by the horns and go with the heat of the moment, regardless how little like herself she was acting.

"I suppose if it's mutual" he shrugged, to which she flipped her hair around as she turned to head towards the door, his eyes fixed on her… back as she went.

"It might very well be, Shepard, after proving yourself like that" she stopped in the doorway and smiled at him over her shoulder, and he couldn't help but return that smile with a no doubt stupid grin of his own before she went out of that door and was gone.

Once she was gone his smile slowly shifted into a snarl, and he pinched the bridge of his nose hard in frustration. "Damn it, John" he cursed at himself. "Just because she's hot, smart and saved your life doesn't mean you should start falling in love with her".

* * *

And scene!

Oh… was that a ship-tease? I bloody well think it is! Ladies and gentlemen, the ship is a-go!

I've always thought it weird that, in a galaxy of billions, if not trillions, of people, there would only be a dozen people worthy of joining Sheppy's squad. Don't worry, he's going to have the very same folks in his squad as in Canon – the road getting there might be a little more serpentine, though. This Asari pilot will die horribly in two chapters and probably off-screen, as it were… unless you people think the squad needs a named shuttle pilot instead of just some random Cerberus Johnnie?

And sorry about the gun-porn in the middle of the chapter. My dad's an amateur gunsmith, so I hear a lot about firearms almost every day, and the nuts-and-bolts of the specs and the models are actually kind of cool even if I'm more of a sword-and-fists kind of guy myself. Also, I am a history student, so I apologise about the history rant in the Kima safehouse access tunnels. Call it a slight personal indulgence.

Lastly, I was getting tired of dialogue when Sheppy and Miranda go at each other's throats. Attribute the OOC stuff in the end of the chapter to good moods and the awesome feeling of being alive after coming face to face with death. Anyway, that's all I have to say. Next chapter should be up fairly soon, but until then…

Read and Review, and DFTBA!


	4. The Mercenary and the Professor

I actually tried to stop at 12000 words this time… but that went out the window, didn't it? So here's another massive chapter – and I'll try my hardest to make the next one at least a little shorter.

The theme song for this chapter is _Stronger than All_ by Hammerfall… out of the sole reason that I couldn't make up my mind for anything else.

Also, thanks to my new Beta, neilin! Awesome dude, whose encouragement and insights are instrumental to this story. Cheers, mate!

* * *

Chapter 4: The Mercenary and the Professor

* * *

"Omega" Miranda muttered as she followed Shepard up the low stairs into the great club-fortress and centre of Aria's, queen of Omega, empire – the Afterlife club – leaving the dank and vile streets of the main district behind them as the bouncers let her and her entourage pass without protest. As far as they knew she was always allowed in there, and this was not the first time she had dealt with Aria. "What a pisshole. Every time I go here I feel I need to take a shower – in addition to the regular decontamination".

"At least it's not hard to find criminals here Garrus supplied from beside her, Shepard leading the team by walking first with the three of the squad members following after him, Jacob mostly silent while Miranda and the Turian talked. "All I had to do was point my shoot. Everyone's in a state of ' _Proximus egomet mihi_ ' on Omega, as we would say on Palaven. A breath of fresh air compared to the Citadel and the work I did there".

"At least here the criminals carry firearms" Miranda noted as they passed a group of Batarian troublemakers on their way out of the club, the armed thugs sneering at Shepard but not having the bravery to go up against a human in full armour who was also toting around an entire arsenal upon his body and the three highly trained combat experts he led. "Then again, so does everyone else too".

"Crime's a vague concept here, I've discovered" Garrus mentioned and they turned down the corridor and passed another line of security, this one headed by a lumbering Elcor, a great green-skinned brute who spoke ponderously and had to clarify his emotionless monotone speech by stating his intended tone before he spoke. "Citadel law doesn't apply in the Terminus systems, and on Omega there's only one rule".

"Don't fuck with Aria?" She had heard that many times when speaking to the Asari boss in question.

"Precisely" Garrus said as they entered the club proper, and Afterlife, Shepard discovered, was loud.

Really, really loud.

From all corners the music, electronic beats and alien sounds mixed together to form a thundering rhythm that burrowed into the ears, blasted from out of every angle of the vast club, and on the circular main level, edges lines with smaller booths and tables for those who wanted to make business or just sit down, the vast majority of the club consisted of a large dancefloor were humans and Turians and Batarians and Asari and even a few Salarians were dancing, all focused around a central circular bar that was the hub to the spokes and wheel that was the club. In the back of the room, past the crowd and the noise and the neon lights in pink and blue and venomous green, waited enforcers and bouncers with guns to guard the entrance to the VIP area. All around them, atop the bar and suspended in the air from rods attached to the high ceiling, danced Asari entertainers, blue alien women both slim and slender or otherwise, in skin-tight suits that put Miranda's to shame with their shameless sex appeal, though there was a great difference: they were strippers and whores, as far as she knew, and she was a warrior and an exemplar of humanity's genetic potential.

"I've had dealings with Aria before" Miranda noted to Shepard and the rest of the squad, who nodded as they made their way into the crowd that parted before them. "I'll go talk to her, smooth things over regarding the events in Kima district the other day and give her the datapad we recovered from Garm, the Blood Pack commander. Maybe she will give us the location of Dr Solus's clinic".

"You go do that" Shepard agreed over the mighty beat of the music blasting out around them, still completely ignoring all the Asari azure flesh on display while Jacob and Garrus couldn't seem to take their eyes off the strippers. Why wasn't he looking at them? He seemed to only have eyes for her, and not only was it disturbing, but… well, it was nothing more than disturbing. She certainly didn't think any higher of him for gazing only at her in that situation. She certainly didn't. "I'll go recruit our mercenary" he said, oblivious to Miranda lying to herself. "You're probably more diplomatic than me anyway".

"Of course" she nodded his way. "See you in half an hour, then" she said as she went towards the stairs in the back of the club that led up to the VIP section and Aria's throne, walking with some trepidation as she knew what was to come, while Shepard turned to find his target.

The target in question had been described in the Cerberus dossier as a consummate mercenary, having worked in the private sector ever since his retirement from the Alliance Marine Corps after the first contact war ended in 2157. His list of successful operations was three times the length of even Shepard's considerable record of achievement, though he had a tendency to be the only man in his squads to make it out of the missions alive, which made him… less than ideal for leadership positions. He was a scarred man, one eye blind and pale and the other one veiled in permanent mistrust where he was sitting alone in a both in the quietest reaches of Afterlife. Well, he wasn't quite alone where he was sitting with pistol at his hip and garbed in cobbled-together golden yellow armour that in places showed off his great and many tattoos. He was, with a lopsided grin, drinking slowly as he was softly conversing with the buxom Asari stripper dancing on the table before him when the three now Cerberus freelancers approached him.

"You Zaeed Massani?" Shepard asked as he took a seat opposite the scarred and armoured mercenary, the man narrowing one blind and one glaring eye at him.

"Depends on who's asking" came the rough reply in a British accent Shepard couldn't quite place but was fairly certain originated in lower London. "Who said you could sit at my table? Can't you see I'm fucking busy?" he jerked one gauntleted hand at the Asari stripper gyrating in front of him on the table. "Now piss off! I'm trying to drink myself to death in peace!"

"I'm Commander Shepard of the Normandy" he answered shortly, figuring this man was not one for frivolous ways and idle talk. "I'm… working with a certain organisation that have hired you for a very special kind of mission". Understanding flashed through Zaeed's good eye and his face became host to a gnarled and wicked grin.

"Well, why didn't you just fucking say so? Take a goddamn seat, all of you! Don't mind Serena – she doesn't mind, does she?" He looked up at the striper with a hopeful smirk as Garrus and Jacob each took a seat next to the old mercenary but made sure that their guns were within close range if they had to kill him. "Do you, love?"

"No freebies, human" she said in a coquettishly seductive voice, one that felt to the ear like the scales of a warm serpent did against the skin. "If they sit in, they got to pay their way". Zaeed cast a begging look at the other men, and Jacob acquiesced slowly and reluctantly while Garrus did so much eagerly, intent on some relaxation after the hell that had been the last few months of his life, leaving all four of them, soldiers and stripper both, looking to Shepard.

"Sorry" he said to the stripper that went with the name Serena on the clock. "I prefer my women to have actual skin and… well, you've got scalp crests. Not my cup of tea. Besides, I don't pay for this sort of thing, mostly". To wit the stripper shrugged and continued to dance to the other men, angled away from Shepard as he had not bought her services. "Is it alright if she listens in on this?" Shepard asked the old warhawk, who made a dismissive wave.

"Bah! She's working in Omega, Shepard – Shepard, was it? She's probably heard more assassination contracts being brokered and shady deals being shaken on this week than we would ever have chance to go through. So" he paused and sipped his Turian alien liquor, specially brewed to taste like Palaven rum but made from the amino-acid material that wouldn't make a human puke blood for a month "you're here for Cerberus, are you?"

"Yeah" Shepard nodded, uncertain about all of this. "I'm working with them for now. They needed my skills to take care of one troublesome little matter in which they have taken an interest. I've heard you've already got the mission briefing by the man in the high tower?" Even if you could mention Cerberus in public in a place like Afterlife it was best to never let it be known that you had been in direct contact with the Illusive Man. People who bespoke such things openly had a tendency to wind up tortured, mutilated and dead in a ditch on some backwater world. Cerberus had made a lot of enemies over the years, but the Illusive Man had made more.

"Aye, I sure have. Bloody piece of work it is, too. Normally I'd jog the fuck on and not look twice on a suicide job" the man took a deep gulp from his glass of Turian rum and paused, his look growing a little wistful beneath all the bloodlust "but I'm getting old".

"Is that the only reason?" Men like Zaeed… they didn't grow old. They burnt out rather than faded away, and there was no way that he would go gently into the good night, not a warrior who had been baptised in fire.

"Fuck no" the mercenary snorted, and Shepard was discovering that, despite for his angry ways, the old man was good company. "The money's good. Really damn good". He paused and downed the rest of his Turian drink, a glass that Garrus had been staring forlornly at, and then added with a cynical shrug. "And it beats buying a ship full of explosives and committing suicide by Omega – which I might still do anyway if I survive this job".

"There are worse ways to go" Garrus noted, and tipped the stripper, both actions that Zaeed seemed to approve of a great deal. "I can think of a few better ones, though… most of which involving the family mausoleum at Palaven and a nuclear bomb".

"Suicide mission?" Zaeed reflected dourly, his voice a long and wary drawl. "You know what, I'll say yes to this whole deal… provided you scratch my back before I scratch yours, Shepard". The commander narrowed his eyes at the mercenary, wondering what sort of drugs he was on that made him set demands for a mission's whose fee he had already taken. "Help me get sorted on one last contract later on – just your standard crash and smash affair – and beat me in a drinking contest here and now. After that I'll be your muscle".

Zaeed was a confident man when it came to his abilities with a rifle and blade and bomb, and even more so confident in his ability to drink any human under the table… but still he was a little shaken by the smile that came onto Shepard's face when that term was voiced, as was he by the terrified sigh uttered by the Turian who seemed to be his friend. "Sure" Shepard spoke, trying supress his glee. "What are we drinking?"

"How about some more Turian Vinium rum?" the old man suggested and made to summon a waitress, but Shepard shook his head and tutted disapprovingly. "What? You'd rather drink Earth microbrews, you pansy?"

"Let's take it up a notch – and then a few notches further, all the way to the top" he said then and looked to Garrus. "Save my seat, Vakarian, and don't spend all your money on the exotic dancer" he said as he rose and went for the bar, the Turian looking after him and then up at the stripper.

"You're very limber, hon" he noted in a drawl "but you're not very exotic, at least not to me. Humans, hmm?"

Shepard made his way to one of the many bars in Omega, elbowing his way through the crowd when he had to – which, considering he was fully armed and armoured from tip to toe and that humans had seemed to grow in respect after three unknown homo sapiens eradicated the entire Omega chapters of the Blue Suns, Eclipse and Blood Pack, was not very often – and in no time at all he approached the Turian bartender on the far left side of the main bar. He didn't try to approach the Batarian bartender that was giving him venomous looks from further down the bar, and he didn't even consider it. He'd been poisoned by Batarians back on Elysium, and he was not going through that again. "What can I get you, soldier?" the Turian bartender asked, her fringe tipped in blue paint to accentuate her features and make her seem more like the Asari kingpin she worked for.

"You see the guys over there, the ones I just went from?" Shepard indicated the far booth by the wall in which Jacob was being, against his will, made to "motorboat" the stripper on the table by the two rowdy and scarred veterans. "We're completing a business transaction and need to celebrate. You got a bottle of Ryncol or two on stock?"

"Ryncol?" she snorted in the way only amused Turians could and brought out four shot glasses and a bottle of the radioactive-looking liquor in question, a thick purple liquid spotted with green in places and more like a slurry than a drink, a picture of a charging, naked, laughing Krogan on the holographic label of the bottle. "Must be some _business deal_. Try not to shoot up the bar, okay? My boyfriend" she jerked her head at one of the Batarian enforcers standing guard for Aria near the stairs to the VIP section with rifle in hand "has a thing about throwing people out the airlock".

"Copy that" Shepard smiled, paid for the bottle and then went with it back to the table, where Zaeed was, in fiery terms and wide gestures, expounding on the virtues of the classic M-8 Avenger assault rifle over the more modern fare of weaponry in a debate with Garrus while Jacob seemed to be enthralled by Serena the stripper.

"You didn't go to the Batarian bartender, did you?" Garrus asked Shepard as the commander was back alongside his men. "He had a family back on Torfan – or so I heard. My contacts here on Omega says that he's been poisoning plenty of humans whenever he's got the chance".

"Bah!" Zaeed vocally disputed the severity of such things. "A little poison never hurt anyone! You could just walk it off-" Shepard, without little ceremony, demonstratively put the bottle on the table, and all eyes turned on him as even Serena stopped dancing. "Ha!" Zaeed whistled with a hideous grin coming onto his heavily scarred face. "Brilliant! Absolutely fucking brilliant!"

"I'm not getting paid enough for this shit" the Asari stripper grumbled and climbed off the table to Jacob's and Zaeed's protests. "Find me when you're not about to blow up the entire club, humans".

"Oh, come on, love! Don't go! We can snuggle!" Zaeed implored after her as she went before he turned back to Shepard with murder in his gaze. "You're going down, marine – mark my words".

"You've obviously never gone up against Shepard" Garrus quipped as Shepard placed a glass before each of them and filled it up with the syrupy Krogan liquor. "Careful, Shepard – shake a bottle of Ryncol too hard and you got yourself an incendiary grenade with a faulty timer".

"Aye" Zaeed agreed and took the glass the commander poured, sniffing the contents of it in eager apprehension. "Used a box of the damn things as Molotov Cocktails back on a mission in the Krogan DMZ in '75. Nearly took my bloody arm off, but it sure was fucking worth it to watch the bastards burn. Cheers!"

" _Korbal_!" Shepard echoed and thought of Wrex when he downed the shot alongside the others. Zaeed, when the liquor hit his system, twisted all the muscles in his face into a hideous grimace once in contact with the foul-tasting fluid, Jacob swallowing five more times than he needed to before he reached for his numb yet burning throat as he bashed his forehead against the surface of the table, and Garrus began shivering softly, his entire body shuddering as he made a series of strangled noises that were quite much like the songs of his biological forefathers in the silver jungles of ancient Palaven. Shepard, in the meanwhile, only made a face and shook his head a little, and barely so, causing the others to glare at him when he was barely affected. "I used to celebrate successful missions with a thousand years old Battlemaster" he quipped and then dropped his voice several octaves to make his best impression of a Krogan. "You squishy Pyjaks haven't got shit on me!"

"Fuck you, Shepard" Zaeed glared, his head already swimming from the liquor that had hit his system like it was ground glass mixed with sulphuric acid, which given the fact that he had no idea of what Ryncol was made from it might very well have actually been. "You set me up!"

"Hate the game, not the player" Shepard poured all of them another shot, grinning victoriously all the while. "I needed to only drink you under the table, did I? This shouldn't take too long".

"Bullshit, sir" Jacob noted in disbelief and wordlessly reached for his glass, confident in his own ability to handle anything of the recreational sort that came at him.

"Bring it on, Shepard" Garrus grunted almost playfully.

"Challenge accepted, dickhead" the old mercenary grumbled back at Shepard and downed another shot in tandem with the others. Five minutes later and after only one more shot things were… getting out of hand. "You know" Zaeed mused drunkenly as he gestured wildly with his hands "you knoow all of those Batarian pricks with their warbeasts? And those what-cha-ma-call-em… husks! Yeah, husks! Those dead things Saren used to run around with?"

"You fought husksss?" Garrus, whose avian metabolism greater subject to alcohol than the humans', wondered at the mercenary. "When did ya do that? And how can you tell the difference between them and normal humans? I mean, except for the glowy bits".

"Their skin's all different and stuff" Jacob noted from the reports he had read and made a face as he clutched his head, the ryncol hitting him like a truck full of Jägermeister all at once. And it tasted a hell of a lot worse…

"But you've got different skin from the other human's too" Garrus pointed out to Jacob, and then looked around the table as the mood grew tense. "What? Wasn't I supposed to notice that? I mean, is it some sort of illness or something-"

"Garrus!" Shepard snapped, eyes wide and voice harsh. "You can't say stuff like that!" He knew that he had alcohol tolerance that was out of this world given how he had been trained by Wrex and his liver fortified after that Batarian tech-expert bombed his lymphal system with neuro-toxin back on Elysium, but given how sober he was comparatively it was actually getting a little ridiculous.

"Racist prick" Zaeed muttered and looked to Jacob, taking another shot in tandem with the other humans as Garrus sat a little embarrassed to the side. "Humans come in all shapes and sizes and colours, Turian. We're to most genetically diverse lot in this entire fucking galaxy".

"How was I supposed to know that?" Garrus protested. "I don't know what skin colours humans are supposed to have! I've always assumed Shepard was the standard, and he's sort of pale and looks a lot like a husk! Do I look like a xenobiologist to you? The answer is no, no I don't – I'm a legionary from the 5th Stellar Legion and a C-Sec operative who dealt with Turians and Salarians and Asari and stuff… even a radical Hanar terrorist once. Oh, those big stupid jellyfishes-".

"You had a business venture to propose" Shepard went to Zaeed again, who nodded in recollection and set back on about explaining what he had earlier been saying, trying desperately to change the topic to something less culturally and racially insensitive.

"Alrright, alright. Here it is… to all of these buggers who think that breeding expendable shock troopers is the best fucking thing since white bread, I'd make a suggestion, mind you. I'd introduce the idiots to, and hold on to your knickers so you don't twist them around so hard that your head pops off… to the idea of a really big bomb. No more good-for-nothing grunts that you can instead put to work in the service sector or something. No more long forgotten races rising from the aether to rip your fucking face off. Just drop it and – boom! Arma-fucking-geddon! Your enemy's vaporised and their home's messed up beyond the efforts of any shampooing service, and you yourself got a shitload of dosh left… enough to give me my twenty-five percent and still have some left for a 'nobody died' party!"

"Whoa" Garrus seemed amazed at the idea.

"That's profound, sir" Jacob laid a brotherly hand in Zaeed's shoulder that was immediately slapped away.

"I hate drinking with you people" Shepard muttered and took another shot of ryncol, one that the others echoed. Fifteen minutes later, after finally dealing with Aria and receiving a lot of thinly veiled sexual innuendos from the Asari kingpin along with a few intimate propositions, all of which she rejected with extreme prejudice, Miranda made her way to their booth in the rear-most part of Afterlife to find Jacob passed out face-down in a plate of Asari calamari which he had ordered when he got the "munchies", Zaeed and Garrus trying to have some sort of discussion about revenge and the merits thereof and how much they loved each other, and she looked to Shepard who was sitting almost sullenly by the wayside, an entire half downed bottle of Ryncol before him. "Did you people install a new liver in me or something?" he wondered at the Cerberus agent as she approached. "Because getting drunk is proving… difficult".

"There's an implant in your liver that serves to filter away most kinds of impurities and poisons – an upgrade we thought it prudent for you to have" she looked to Jacob and cocked her head to the side. "Is he dead?"

"No… he just said that he thought me matching a Krogan shot-for-shot was impossible. He tried to go toe to toe with the Shepard, and look where it got him". He stood, a little gingerly from his aching muscles and his inebriation that was nowhere near as severe as that of the other three males, and slung Jacob up onto his back, having started to regain much of his earlier strength only a week after his resurrection at Miranda's hand. He had been training, training as hard as he only had before during his twenty hour training sessions during the first two months at ICT back on Earth, and even when he did sleep he had placed the electrical muscle stimulant pads given to him by Chakwas over his major muscle groups to regain muscle even when he slept. He ate three times as much as he usually did and took what felt like way too many drugs to make sure he didn't suffer from over-training or muscle degradation, and it was tiring… but as he dragged Jacob out from Afterlife with Miranda shepherding Garrus and Zaeed in front of her he was glad that it was already paying off.

"Shepard" Miranda spoke as he handed Jacob over to Garrus and Zaeed, making their way through the darkened and gloomy tunnels the led from the main mercantile area of Omega to the old repurposed wharfs where the Normandy was docked. "A word".

"Yeah" he nodded and fell in beside her as Garrus and Zaeed conversed loudly about entirely inappropriate matters. "You make any progress with Aria?" He would have thought that the dank filth of Omega would have rendered Miranda less beautiful to his eyes by proxy, but such was not the case. In fact it was more like she, a pristine pale and black and icy-blue flower, was all the more fair against the backdrop of the dung heap that was the station, and he had to make sure that he – no, she was not a flower but a person, a hell of a special person, and he was very much too drunk.

"I did" she spoke as severely as she had to him before the battle of Kima district, the tension between them rising once again as they weren't in close proximity to each other during the two days they had spent recuperating on the ship. "And that is what I wanted to talk about. Aria was very grateful for us taking out the conspiracy against her". At least her hands had been as she had been wanting to paw Miranda's posterior before the Cerberus agent had threatened to shoot her unless she started acting professionally again. "She owes us a favour, and Aria keeps her promises. We made a very powerful friend, Shepard. But there is a problem".

"She took the news of the mercenary coalition poorly?" he wondered.

"You could say that easily. She threw the datapad into the face of one of her enforcers and in short terms declared war on the Blood Pack and the Eclipse, but most of all the Blue Suns. They're the most numerous in this sector and the most powerful" she curled her lips wryly and scoffed "though not for much longer, I suspect".

"Look, look, look mate, I'm being completely fucking serious" Zaeed could be overheard drawling drunkenly to Garrus whilst the two of them carried an unconscious Jacob along with them. "They say they're just dancers, but that's just to keep the worst of the rabble off them. You be nice, you play your cards right, and you tip generously, and they might not be consorts like Sha'ira but they'll do their best damn impression of her, you mark my words".

"Did you find out where the Salarian professor is hiding?" Shepard asked Miranda, ignoring Garrus and Zaeed, to which she nodded.

"Yes, and that is the problem. He isn't hiding, Shepard – he runs a clinic in Gozu district, one of the lower levels of Omega that's been hit by a virulent plague that's deadly to every single species but humans, Krogans and Vorcha – and even Krogans get hit, they just survive it".

"Crap" he cursed and pinched the bridge of his nose, scowling before he gave Miranda a look. "And there's more, isn't there?"

"Perceptive, Commander. Yes: Gozu was controlled by the Blue Suns, who used it as a base of power and recruited from the populous there. But the Blue Suns chapter here on Omega was eradicated by us and any that are left are comparatively toothless. With the plague claiming more and more victims by the minute and Vorcha militias and scavengers roaming unchecked without the control of the Blue Suns the district is a warzone. Riots rage in the streets as Gozu burns". She paused as they rounded a corner and the airlock to the Normandy, guarded by two Cerberus crewmembers with assault rifles, came into sight. "We have to get the doctor out of there, and soon".

"Dammit!" Shepard snapped, not at her but at fate itself. "And here I thought that getting those bumbling idiots" he gestured at the three former soldiers up ahead who were stumbling up towards the airlock and demanded to be let inside "drunk was a good idea!" He gave Miranda a burning look. "You realise what this means, Miranda?"

"Yes, I do" she nodded in confirmation. "We have to get him out ourselves, just the two of us".

* * *

"Why the bloody hell did the Commander sent us out to fetch this merc's stash?" Kenneth "Ken" Donnelly, former Alliance engineer with a master's degree in interstellar construction and vacuum engineering, specialising in the electrical engineering of spaceships and space stations, had been reduced to a damn bellboy, and he didn't like it. He and Gabby, Gabriella Daniels, his best friend in the whole galaxy and his secret crush – though he had never admitted that out not wanting to ruin their friendship or being friendzoned to oblivion – and Kelly Chambers, queen bee in the Lazarus Cell after that frosty bitch Lawson, had been called away from their duties to run errands. Errands!

Well, technically it was the mission of fetching the arsenal of one Zaeed Massani, who had stumbled drunkenly through the Normandy's airlock arm in arm with the newly recruited Garrus Vakarian singing a very out of tune version of the Turian anthem "Die for the Cause", followed by a frigid yet terrifying operative Lawson. Ken and Gabby had been loitering around the CIC – because there was bugger all else to do on the Normandy after having spent nearly three days docked to Omega – and so had been treated to the spectacle of being ordered by Lawson to go fetch this Zaeed character's weapons and armour and clothes from his apartment as he himself was obviously too drunk to do. Granted, that was an expedition through a criminal station, a wretched hive of scum and villainy if there ever was one, with only the three of them and their pistols as defence, but such peril paled in comparison to what the fighting members of the crew would be asked to do while fighting the Collectors for Cerberus.

So yes, it was an errand. A bloody errand! But when Shepard himself had stormed aboard the ship after Miranda Lawson, looking like he had found out that someone had pissed on his nan's grave so furious he was, no one had wanted to argue. And he did have that voice which you mostly heard from video game commanders from your entertainment system these days, so saying no to him was hard enough as it was already.

"This is… charming" Gabby said as they came in under the shadow of the Chrysalis building, a great monolith of a building that had originally been one of the supports holding up a massive hollowed out area in the centre of Omega's main asteroid, the ore in it depleted to leave a city under the vast dome of the old main mine and the undercity reaching down into the wards below it. Habitats and houses climbed the interior of that great dome and the supports that held it up, keeping it from shattering under the weight of its own artificial gravity system, had been used as the core of great skyscraper-like buildings, buildings like the Chrysalis. It was black and loomed like a monolith, or would have loomed if not for all of the other similar buildings that dotted the skyline of that infernal city, and was all the more imposing as Ken and Kelly, with Gabby following after along with a mass effect field-suspended transportation plate in tow. It was with no small amount of fear that Ken entered that building, though he tried to tell himself otherwise.

First Tokyo under Anderson, and then Perugia during the battle of the Citadel and facing down hell in the form of an ancient evil, the Reaper, Sovereign, Ken and Gabby had gone through the shadow of death and come out the other side. He was convinced that nothing the interior of the building had to offer that could frighten him anymore.

His bravado lasted all of five minutes.

"Geez, Ken!" Gabby exclaimed after the Scotsman had shrieked and jumped three feet into the air all of the sudden as they went down a corridor on the 67th floor, having taken the rattling elevator up. "It was just a rat. Keep your socks on".

"'Just a rat'? Did you see the bloody thing? It was ginormous! Larger than a cat!" he protested as they followed the corridor until the end of it and the metal door there on, the floors clean but worn, every single inch of the building bespeaking a sort of decay and carelessness that Gabby, in her often quiet but incredibly keen and sensible intelligence, found more than a little sad. What stories these walls could tell if they could talk… well, the building was low income housing on Omega and primarily inhabited by travelling mercenaries and pirates on shore leave, so no, on second thought she didn't want to hear the stories of that place.

Through that door they went, using the key handed to Kelly by Zaeed after having, slurring all the while, introduced himself to her with a lecherous "Hello, love", and inside that apartment they saw… "Wow" Ken breathed as he looked around after the automatic lights were switched on. "That's a lot of guns".

"Someone's a little bit paranoid, I think" Kelly avoided the trap rigged in the doorway and turned off the live proximity mine placed by the door with laser tripwire aimed so that anyone stepping unwarily through the door would get their legs taken off. Filling the walls, stacked high around them, were guns and rifles and grenades – most of them were the standard modern energy-pulse fare, though some used high-powered pellets and some were from the early days of the first contact war and used bullets – and the parts of the walls that weren't were covered in maps and reports and old pictures, pictures of groups of fully armed mercenaries that all included Zaeed, and in those photopaper pictures the faces of those mercenaries been crossed over with red marker, indicating that Massani was the only one left alive of the bunch. "There is a lot of things" the Yeoman further observed.

"Oh, well. Let's just load this stuff up on the sodding cart and get going" Kenneth grumbled and hoisted up a crate of grenades taken from one of the stacks onto the lowly hovering carrier plate, looking wryly at the gathered explosive devices and handling them with care. He was usually a careless man, but around firearms and explosives it was a completely different story. Every member of the Alliance Engineering Corps was considered a marine per default, as they were stationed on ships but could be deployed planetside to build and maintain installations and military vehicles, and so every member of the AEC had to undergo rudimentary combat training, trained to shoot with both assault rifles and pistols. Ken had, however, been really bad at shooting and was by nature skittish around guns. Gabby, fortunately enough, did not have that problem.

"This man, Zaeed, seems to be an angry sort" she remarked as she carried another crate of explosives, plastic ones this time, past a picture on the wall of a dark man with near-black eyes and a callous cast to his features in a blue armour, an image that had seemed to be used as targeting board by the old mercenary for his practice with throwing daggers and darts. "Wouldn't want to get on his bad side".

"His psych-profile indicates that he is quite stable" Chambers protested as she began to lift guns and rifles off of the walls and sorting them according to type. "He is angry and bitter, quite certainly – but he's far from the most aggressive or unstable or even the potential recruit with the darkest past amongst all the ones we endeavour to bring in". Getting another box of explosives she struggled a bit under the weight of it, and Ken hurried over to her side, taking it from her hands. "Thank you, Kenneth".

"You can ask me to handle your box any time, Chambers" he grinned at her as he placed the crate on carrier tray, and the Yeoman didn't seem to be repulsed by his lecherous ways but instead was about to flirt back. Gabby narrowed her eyes at the other woman. No, she didn't trust her. Not one bit.

"Is the Commander going to be recruiting more crazy people?" she inquired loudly to keep the hag's claws out of her Kenny.

"We need several experts, human or otherwise, to fight the collectors" the Cerberus Yeoman said in a non-committal sort of way. "Speaking of the Commander" Kelly said from aside as she loaded another crate of grenades, the last one, onto their little ferry system. "Have you had any interaction with him since you were assigned to the crew of the Normandy?"

"Of course we have" Ken said before Gabby could tell him to shut up, as she was convinced that the Cerberus _bitch_ would not have their idol and Commander's best interest at heart given her alliance to Cerberus. They were terrorists, in Gabby's mind at least, and the only reason she and Ken had joined them was because Cerberus had believed in Commander Shepard when no one else had, bringing him back to life and sending him to fight an enemy that no one else had the guts to face. Chambers had been with Cerberus since before Shepard and Lazarus. She was not to be trusted. "He made the rounds around the ship as soon as he was done with his first debriefing by the Illusive Man – though he did mention having been to the armoury and ordering some sweet weaponry from that sexy robot voice. He stopped by and talked to us for the longest while, so he did".

"Oh?" Chambers asked, seemingly only casually interested, but Gabby knew otherwise. "What did you talk about?"

"Well, about our service history and about how it was no longer being in the Alliance" Ken chatted amicably on and on. "And he asked where we trained and how we joined Cerberus and stuff. Nothing more than small talk – tough he liked that we saluted. Made him feel more at home, I think".

"I see" Chambers seemed to note that fact down for future reference. "How about you, Daniels? How did you perceive the Commander?"

"He seemed at home, glad to be back on a ship" she admitted in a non-committal, not wanting to reveal too much. "And surprisingly social. He said he was making the rounds and getting to know all of his crew. Not even Anderson was like that when we served under him".

"You don't mention that he asked you upgrade his Omni-tool?" Ugh, sometimes she just wanted to smack that man as he ran his mouth much more than he should've. "See, Kelly love, he was trying to sync his Omni-tool up with ours, so that he could communicate directly with the engineer deck if he needed to, but it wasn't working. So Gabby takes one look at it and low and behold, the thing's fried deeper than a battered sausage. He scratches his head and says 'Hold on a wee moment' and goes to fetch a new one from the armoury, and me and Gabby thinks he's not gonna come back. But then he does, and asks us to help him get it up and running and optimised. For a marine grunt he's pretty sharp, and quite nice actually".

"Really?" Chambers asked, sounding interested even over the sound of Gabby grinding her teeth together in frustration at the openness of her fellow engineer. "You said she upgraded it?"

"Aye, so she did. Installed the military edition software onto it, with all kinds of awesome plugins. Combat hacking, overload protocols, incendiary programs for when you have access to plastic explosives and cold-shot ones for when you got the same for liquid nitrogen canisters. Direct grenade interface, armour electrocution shots, Alliance military drone interface, even training simulations of all kinds and advanced hacking tutorials – I doubt he knows how to use half of all of those things, but we went all the way. It's an Omni-tool fit for a tech-expert".

"That seems quite handy" Kelly smiled at both of them, looking like she was nothing but appreciative of their efforts. "I'm sure the Commander was very happy with all the upgrades, Kenneth, Gabriella". _You have to earn the right to call me that, bitch_ , Gabby growled mentally but forced herself to smile back at the woman. Who knew what might happen to the two of them if they showed hostility to Cerberus. That organisation had done worse than killing to its own people for less.

" _Not the mad stars raving round me_ " Ken sang idly as he worked, using it to occupy his idle mind while his body toiled with taking rifles off the walls. " _Cannon's flash or thunder's roll_ " it was a folk song often sung by his mother to him as they worked in the late nights over the by her designed cross-sections of warships together. " _Not the Reaper's rage could wound me_ / _While her image fill'd my soul_!" He had, of course modified the lyrics somewhat to fit their situation.

Gabby liked his singing. The man had many faults: he was neurotic, complained all of the time, and was generally a sexist arse and quite a bit of a lecher. But by God could he sing, and sometimes when toiling by the ship's engines his eyes could grow so soft and tender as he sang, as if he would over a child of his very own. He was so smart in some ways, but so stupid in others, and despite that his behaviour often frustrated Gabby to no end she would always be there to take care of him. He had no one else know, and he wouldn't make it on his own.

And she, thought she tried to convince herself otherwise, would not make it through all the coming horror without him.

* * *

"You know, for a while back there while chasing Saren I used to wear white armour" Shepard commented when they had passed the security checkpoint and entered the elevator to take them down about half a mile through the old mining complex that was Omega to the Gozu district. "You know, the standard Alliance navy White and Blue, or black and blue for marines, or white and red if you're some sort of infantry jarhead. Trust me, it gets you nowhere the same effect as the red and black. People are terrified when you show up and loom when you're in black and crimson armour. Do you loom, Miranda?"

"I've found that many other things besides sheer size can be imposing, Shepard" she replied as the elevator down to the lower levels, one of many, began to move to the sound of softly grating metal and whirring machinery. "Intelligence, for one. One's intellect can tower over others as well as one's stature, and perhaps even more so in certain situations".

"Indeed" he had to agree that she certainly was… imposing. And beautiful… but she wasn't Ash.

Him and Ashley… he thought that they had something special together, with the way they just clicked together perfectly, like two pieces of a puzzle. He wasn't sure that it was love, perhaps not quite, but she was supportive, she was familiar, and she was good to have around – and in that situation, as they were heading towards certain doom on Ilos, she had been just what he needed. But… he had looked for her over the extra-net after Illusive Man said she had rejoined the main Alliance Military, trying to pull any strings he had left to get to know where she had gone, what she was doing, if she had moved on. The only thing his questing proved wat the Illusive Man's claim that her files and service seemed surprisingly well classified. And besides… he wasn't so sure about her anymore. After dying and coming back he wasn't sure about anything anymore.

"Do you have a plan, Shepard?" Miranda asked after some period spent in heavy silence between the two as they descended into the depths of the station and thus woke him from his dark thoughts. "According to Aria her men are trying to hold the perimeter and restore order, but they aren't soldiers. We are walking into a warzone, Commander. What is your plan of action?"

"It's best of we try to stay off the main streets and out of the carnage as much as we can" he pondered and scratched his chin, the plate of his black gauntlets cold against his stubbled skin. "I've never done riot-control or urban warfare of this kind. Elysium and Torfan were all out attacks, and the Citadel Presidium was mostly empty when Saren and Sovereign hit it. Your guess is probably as good as mine. You have any idea of where in the district the clinic is?"

"We're out of luck, Shepard" she said as she brought out her Omni-tool, scouring the data Aria had provided. "Dr Solus's clinic is in the middle of Gozu district, nearly a mile away. And if the information I've received is accurate-" the elevator hit the bottom trench and the doors slid open, revealing a look that seemed to be into hell itself. "Oh God".

Fires, in apartments and in the homes and in the streets and on the terraces, filed Gozu district. Chemical torches were held aloft in the gloom of a district quenched in darkness, the sounds of breaking glass and blaring sirens and the screams of the raging and the damned making the distant hum of the life support system's fans all but impossible to hear through the chaos, and lit by fire shadows of terrified aliens roamed the streets, hunched over and delirious and their mouths dripping with bloody bile as the plague ravaged their bodies. Immediately before them lay a security station where guards, a few Krogan backed by a large group of humans with rifles and guns, all of them under Aria's employ, and beyond the gates of that checkpoint a large crowd was trying to force their way out of Gozu, trapped and delirious and dying in their violence.

"Crap" Shepard muttered and looked over his shoulder at the weapons strapped to his back. "Well, sniper rifle's useless, I guess. I don't have any concussive rounds for the Typhoon… guess it's Crusader time" he went on as Miranda, having herself no compunctions about being brutal towards the civilian populous, pulled free her submachine gun, a custom gilded black M-9 Tempest SMG she had designed herself to preform precisely to her specifications. She used her Omni-tool to spec its shots to a slightly slower velocity but to go through a di-glycitine treatment on their way through the barrel, making them essentially burn upon contact with oxygen. She had magnesium bullets for just such occasions that were slightly more incendiary, but it was best to not waste such precious resources on crowd control.

Some persuasion from Shepard was all it took for the Krogan overseer to let her and Shepard through, which required him and his men to fire upon the crowd – which it seemed that the battle-hungry berserker had been itching to do for the longest time judging by the gusto with which he slung his shotgun around to use as a club and batter the closest civilian over the head with. However, this wasn't the best of ideas, as it turned out, as the crowd took issue with such callous cruelty and stormed the secrutiy checkpoint, Miranda and Shepard managing to slip through the chaos without firing a single shot of their own, sprinting for a rear alley as what seemed like thousands of enraged citizens stormed down the street with makeshift weapons held aloft.

"I told you" she panted as they stood in the shadows of that alleyway, waiting and hoping that the mob would pass them by. "I told you. When you first got aboard the Normandy, after I introduced you to EDI and the crew" she bent her head backwards to make air flow down her lungs faster. "I told you then that you should have gone for Solus first. But did you listen?" she shook her head in rhetorical frustration. "Of course you bloody well didn't".

"Yeah, well hindsight's twenty-twenty" he snapped back at her as he gazed carefully out of the mouth of that alley, eyes sharp and his every sense on full alert. "What's done is done. Your boss told me the same thing, so that's why I maybe didn't listen. I don't like terrorists telling me what to do". She opened her mouth to argue only to find a metal-plated finger upon her lips, Shepard silencing her even as he kept gazing out of that alleyway. "Save it, princess. We don't have time to banter right now. We're not getting back out that way – we need to find another route to the clinic". He snapped his gaze to hers, steely and determined. "Can you find us one?"

"Ass" she muttered his way as she brought up her Omni-tool and pulled up a layout of the district from off of the extranet, scowling at it like she would have at a tear in her favourite Cerberus uniform. "We can circumvent most of the riots if we go the long way around the eastern part of the district" she pondered their options. "But that will take us dangerously close to Vorcha territory, according to Aria's information. When she isn't trying to get into my pants she's quite resourceful".

"Keep your snide remarks to yourself, Lawson" the Commander barked as he regained his breath before he even registered Miranda's actual words, hearing little but the tone in her speech. "What's the quickest way to the clinic? Vorcha ain't got nothing on me and my ballistic barrage".

"If you think that you're going to be fighting through legions of alien rodents to get to the Professor then you can do so on your own" she muttered sourly, regarding the map even as she hoped that what she had stepped in back there had been just water, not… _ugh_. His glare her way caused her to sigh and focus on the matter at hand, and so she sketched out a vague path for them to follow, upon which they subsequently embarked on.

Gozu lay near the bottom of Omega, the home of the permanent residents who had nowhere else to go or who made a living off feeding from the dreg that seeped through the cracks from the city above. Humans, Batarians, exiles from the Turian colonies who had no place in the Hierarchy: one could find all sorts in Gozu district, and in their extreme poverty all of them were equal. The plague had changed that and stripped the thin veneer off of the underground society, and so it was that Miranda and Shepard, walking carefully and pacing slowly as not to arise any suspicion from the few people that still roamed the streets, they went.

On the edge of the city slum block that housed the Salarian professor's clinic they found a Batarian sloughed against a wall, remarkable over the fact that he was in armour rather than in civilian clothing, a rifle lying discarded beside him. "Human" he coughed, the bile running down his cheeks coloured red with the blood pouring into his lungs. "Should've guessed". His fingers reached for the barrel of his sniper rifle as Shepard and Miranda approached the corner where he sat but his hands lacked the strength to grip it, and so his hand sloughed to the ground in deathly hopelessness. "Bad enough that you inflict us with the plague. Now you lack the decency to even wait until I die before you come to steal my possessions".

Shepard stopped, to Miranda's great ire, and chose to stay by the Batarian male, kindness and mercy the only things upon his face as he beheld that fallen warrior. "Is there anything I can do for you?" he wondered, and got naught but bile in return.

"Get away from me, human! Your kind has done too much already!" the Batarian snapped, one of his four eyes bleeding around the edges from the sickness that ravaged his body. "Your plague did this to me. Your feigned pity is the final insult". He coughed raggedly, blood spilling from his lips as his chest arched in struggled cramps. "Damn you- damn it… I can't even… I can't"

"Hey!" Shepard barked and crouched down before the batarian, slapping him gently over the face to keep him alert even as he reached for the canister of medi-gel by his lower hip. " _Khas'kou-tah_! Stay with me!" he spoke as he pooped off the Batarian's breastplate and ripped through the thin cloth beneath, smearing a large portion of Medi-gel onto the male's aching muscles. "This won't cure the plague, but it might relax your chest muscles, help your breathing". Shepard looked up at his XO as he took one of the Batarian's arms over his shoulder and stood gingerly. "Miranda, we've got to get him to the clinic. He doesn't have much time".

"Certainly, Commander" she narrowed her eyes at him, showing her disproval but voicing it not as she followed after Shepard, shouldering the Batarian and holding him upright, as they made their way towards the central clinic. He was doing nothing but wasting their time, wasn't he? And hadn't he fought Batarians for most of his career? Weren't they the enemy, even if some things he had said previously indicated that he respected them to some small degree?

"You… you helped me" came the wheezing words from the male's cramped throat made dry and ragged by pain and misery, his tone bewildered still and all but lost. "You spoke our language… it wasn't the translator that did that… why?"

" _S'traakha_ … it's what I do" Shepard replied as they rounded another corner, hiding from another raging mob in the shadows of an alley before they snuck out again, moving to see the clinic stand before them, more a fortress than a hospital. "I don't know if I can find a cure for this plague, but I'm going to try. _Khar'ten kai_ – a warrior's promise". Bodies dangled from the jutting balconies of that clinic by nooses, Blue Suns mercenaries' corpses rotting still in their armour as to ward off any who sought to enter the low concrete building's double glass doors with ill intent. "What's your name, warrior?"

"Gahak" came the rugged answer as they went to stand in the shadow of that door, Miranda and Shepard assuring the automated defence mechs at the gates that they meant to do no hostility within the clinic despite their weapons and armour. "Your words… they sound sincere". He seemed surprised, Miranda reflected as they came into a large waiting room lined with Batarians and Turians deep in the grips of the plague, human aides tending to them wearing armlets in white and red to designate that they were clinic aides. "Maybe it's the fever, but… you have honour" Gahak coughed, letting out another large lump of bloody slime upon the already grimy metal floor. "Rare… in a human". Four wary eyes looked at Shepard without hatred, having in them only the resignation of the tortured and a longing for death. "Have you killed many of my kind, warrior?"

"I have" Shepard answered slowly, as if reluctantly, as they moved deeper into the clinic, down a corridor to another waiting room "but always in battle, and never wastefully. Your kin's eyes were whole when they died, I assure you". His words were interrupted by the Batarian suddenly jerking under his own weight, foaming at the mouth and collapsing to the floor of the crowded hallway. "Get him some help, now!" Shepard roared at the nearest aide, who hurried over as she did not want to dispute a man carrying with him so much firepower upon his body. "He's seizing up! I can't-" he spoke almost helplessly as that aide and a few of her co-workers took Gahak the Batarian away for treatment, and as he stood in the hallway looking lost Miranda lay a hand upon the shoulder of his armour.

"Shepard, you can't save them all" she said, just like she had before and would do again, though her words were more pitiful this time, more understanding and caring for his needs. "Just… you did what you could. You can do a lot of things, but you're not a god". She pulled him with her as they headed deeper into the clinic, speaking to the now quiet warrior in black armour to reassure him and maintain his convictions. "Stay on target: find the Professor. Then we can find a cure, and maybe save those that can be saved".

Slowly Shepard nodded, brightening a little at her rarely seen caring side – though it was a role she had adopted for the sake of keeping him focused and not something she had any actuall proficiency in doing – and together they searched through the clinic. In the end they found who they were looking for, standing over a workbench in the same room as two medical assistants and a now dead Turian upon an operating table, working efficiently and outwardly completely calm despite the emotional wrecks that were his two aides who had just lost another patient to the plague. "Professor Mordin Solus?"

"Hmm". The Salarian was old for his species, meaning that he was somewhere in the mid-thirties, and his large and bug-like black eyes displayed an intelligence that was both dizzying in scope and nauseating in speed as he examined the two approaching humans. "Don't recognize you from area. Too well-armed to be refugees. No mercenary uniform. Quarantine still in effect". Miranda, who was regarding him in return, saw that he carried his red and white doctor's robe on top of a set of Salarian military fatigues, betraying a commando background. "Here for something else. Vorcha? Crew to clean them out? Unlikely. Vorcha a symptom, not a cause". He cocked his head to the side even as he worked, narrowing black eyes just a hint. "The plague? Investigating possible use as bio-weapon? No. Too many guns, not enough data equipment. Soldiers, not scientists". He moved to another bench, holding a vial of extracted viscera upon which he had run tests and applying a protein stimulant and dialyctic acid to speed up the gestation process of the virus he was examining. "Hired guns, maybe? Looking for someone? Yes!" the Salarian nodded both at them, his own deduction and the results he saw on the slab before him. "But who? Someone important. Valuable. Someone with secrets. Someone like me".

"Relax, Mordin" Shepard told him in his deep voice and stepped around to come face to face with the doctor, urging calm by his tone. "I'm Commander Shepard, and I came here to find you. I'm on a critical mission, and I need your help".

"Mission?" the Salarian wondered but then shook his head. "What mission? No. Too busy. Clinic understaffed. Plague spreading too fast. Who sent you?" Miranda hoped that Shepard wasn't overly blunt about explaining things as he usually was when that question was posed.

"Ever heard of an organisation called Cerberus?" But unfortunately she was still dealing with Shepard, who had about as much subtlety as a brick in a dishwasher.

"Crossed paths on occasion. Thought they only worked with humans". Mordin narrowed his eyes, his spider-like fingers going up to his head to touch the fleshy horns upon the crest of his head, one of them broken off and scarred over, his armoured fingerpads trailing over it in what seemed to be a nervous tick. "Why request Salarian aid?"

"I'm on a mission to shut down the Collectors, and I need your help". Well, Miranda noted, it seemed that the Doctor was responding well to the direct approach, and that maybe he and Shepard could work together with little issue.

"Collectors? Interesting" the Salarian noted, pondering the matter rapidly. "Plague hitting the slums is engineered. Collectors one of few groups with technology to design it". Nodding the Salarian turned fully towards Shepard and Miranda- "Our goals may be similar". He retrieved a heavy vial, the results of his earlier experiments, from its metal cradle upon his desk, a desk already littered with medical paraphernalia, all glittering contemptuously in the gloomy light of that clinic basement. "But most stop plague first. Already have a cure. Need to distribute it at environmental control centre. Vorcha guarding it. Need to kill them".

Shepard, frustrated with his inability to fight a sickness and the terrors they had seen around them, sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose at that. "Why can't anyone ever just say 'Sure! Let's go right now! No strings attached'?" he grumbled venomously.

"Shepard, that is childish and spiteful". Miranda's voice hit him like a barbed whip across the back, the Cerberus operative moving to stand beside him. "Pardon him, doctor. He has a tendency to get… emotional". The Salarian was about to indicate his head in a dismissal of both apology and perceived wrong when suddenly a low siren began to whirr in the clinic, and the low hum that had been so constant all throughout Shepard's and Miranda's treck through the chaotic district was silenced, it's absence deafening and terrifying both. "What the hell was that?"

"Vorcha have shut down environmental systems. Trying to kill everyone. Need to get power back before district suffocates". Mordin seemed, however, to be in no greater hurry than before as he took the vial from its cradle and made as if to hand it to Shepard. "Here, take plague cure. Four conditions for joining Cerberus". Shepard, taking he cure warily, nodded and agreed to listen. "One: reactivate environmental systems. Two: help distribute cure".

"And the other two?" he wondered, scowling darkly.

"Works for Cerberus, soldiers, privately funded. Therefore resources. Considerable resources. Likely has ship, crew. Since Cerberus: all likely human. Highly trained. Immune to plague". Shepard and Miranda both nodded, to which the Salarian noted as if obvious, his deductive reasoning superb. "Conditions three and four: help secure clinic. Restore order in district with highly trained crew. Then will join you".

"Is that all?" Miranda wondered, thinking that it was the Commander's own descision to make… but in knowing him he would jump at the chance to help the helpless of Gozu district.

"One more thing. Daniel. One of my assistants. Went into Vorcha territory. Looking for victims. Hasn't come back". There was a hint of a plea in the Salarian's voice, and Shepard, being the big softy that he actually was, took to it hook, line and sinker.

"If I see him, I'll do what I can to help" the Commander rapidly agreed.

"Thank you. Told him not to go. But he's smart. Bright future". His eyes darkened for the fraction of a second. "I hope".

"I found a Batarian victim near the entrance to the district. His name is Gahak. I brought him in upstairs". Shepard spoke carefully, making sure that it verbally came across that this was the counter-proposal for the previous secondary requirement. "Could you make sure he gets his treatment?"

"Gahak? Batarian fighter, former pirate. Vorcha hunter, good with sniper rifle. Has reputation" Mordin noted rapidly as if knowing about the plague-stricken victim in question, showing extensive knowledge of the district in which he worked. "Will see what I can do".

"Then we best get going" Shepard said and moved towards the door, heading for Environmental Control and the salvation of Gozu district therein.

However, getting to the place they needed to go was a project more easily undertaken than completed.

The district through which the nearest sizeable service hatch to Environmental Control was, as Aria had informed Miranda, under Vorcha control, and though people still lived there sparsely they were often the poorest of the poor, looters besetting them when the Vorcha did not now that the Blue Suns no longer were there to maintain control. Shepard and Miranda had to fight tooth and nail through most of the neighbourhood, but once they came across a sizeable Vorcha patrol there seemed to be no more immediate enemies after Miranda had downed the last fleeing Vorcha with a single well-aimed shot to the back of the head.

"Where did you learn to shoot?" Shepard whistled, impressed, as they stood from out of cover and kept making their way through the Vorcha-infested reaches of the slums. He was in a better mood then, for Vorcha were an enemy he could fight, something he could beat, something that wasn't as invisible or insidious as a sickness. As they went, in no small hurry but needing to pass the time through the silence somehow, he tried to reach out to her.

"Private tutors" she answered defensively, rejecting his attempts at any sort of cordial proximity. "Why? Why do you ask?"

"Just trying to get to know my XO" he jabbed, concerned by the suddenly so cold shoulder she was giving him. "Tell me more about yourself, Miranda".

"Is this really the right time for this?" she sighed and put her hand to her forehead. Dammit, this inconsolable idiot was going to give her wrinkles, wasn't he? "I guess that's fair" she admitted when he gave her a questioning look that said that they might very well be dead by dawn the next day. "I've spent the last two years spent learning everything there is to know about you".

"Everything…?" he wondered, swallowing hard at the thought. Did she know about the…? And the…? Even about the…? Oh, no, this was the worst breach of privacy in the history of the galaxy.

"Everything, Commander" she verified as they slowly made their way down the carnage-littered street, eyes trained on the Vorcha infested gloom before them. "Well, about me… you should probably know that I've had extensive genetic modification. It wasn't my decision, but I make the most of it. It's one of the reasons the Illusive Man handpicked me for this mission: I'm very good at just about anything I choose to do".

"I see". _Ah ha_! He had an inkling for the longest time that those gratuitous gravity defying breasts of hers hadn't been all natural, and he had been right all along. _Score one for Shepard_ , he noted internally before he actually took in the gravity of what she was saying. "You certainly don't lack for confidence".

"It's just a fact, Shepard" she said then, icy blue eyes narrowing as she gazed down into the darkness of Omega's deepest levels. "My reflexes, my strength, even my looks: they were all designed to give me an edge. There is no point in hiding from it". She seemed… not very enthusiastic about it all the same, he remarked internally as he watched her facial expression carefully – though her face hardly gave anything at all away. "It's the reason I'm trusted to oversee the most dangerous, risky, and technically demanding operations Cerberus undertakes". She cast a look his way to inform him that she very well knew that he was staring at her. "And it's why I was assigned to you. It's my job to make sure you succeed".

"So" he said as they made their way towards the residential district detailed on their maps by the Salarian professor, his eyes now locked again on the darkness ahead, wondering where all the damn Vorcha had gone. "What level of genetic modification are we talking here? I myself got some stuff put in by MarsGene, but only against genetic diseases or hereditary disorders and the bad crap… and the ones against muscle and bone-matter degradation during space travel".

"It's very thorough" she assured him as she aimed her gun at something in the distance, but it scurried away before she could determine what it was. "Physically I'm superior in many ways. I heal quickly and I'll likely live half again as long as the average human. My biotic abilities are quite advanced as well… for a human" she demonstrated by picking up a turned over hoverbike that were laying in their way and sending it crashing into the distant darkness in a biotic blue haze. "Add to that some of the best training and education credits can buy and it's all rather impressive, really".

He regarded her back as she moved ahead into the right residential district, the one where the largest emergency vent to the EC ducts lay past the balcony of one of the larger habitats. "Sounds like you were made to be perfect" he said to that white shape in the gloom, and he had to admit that even her back was sexy, slim and supple yet muscular, her every shape defined through her suit.

"Maybe, but I'm not" she spoke in a darker tone. "I'm still human, Shepard. I make mistakes just like everyone else – and when I do the consequences can be severe. Everyone expects a lot from someone with my… abilities". In the distance, from the place in which the vents and service tunnels they were heading for lay, they heard a rattling, and immediately the pair of them fell silent, approaching the ruckus that came out of a humble but well-built residence in a slow stalk.

"Please… I'm telling you the truth!" came the voice from within as Shepard crouched down and peered in through a window at the front of the residence, seeing five humans, unarmed all, crouching down on the floor as four Batarian looters with guns stood looming over them, snarling and ready to kill. "I work for Mordin at the clinic. I came to help you!" The speaker was a skinny young man, idealistic and frail, a large duffle-bag of medical supplied by his side as he tried to remain brave in the face of certain death.

"Silence, vermin!" The leader of the looters, having no desire to indulge in the weeping of one pitiful human, slammed the butt of his gun over the young man's face and, in breaking his nose with a wet crunch, send him down to the floor, speaking up to the other looters. "Saret! Dishak! Kishock! Hurry up! We need to get out of here before the Vorcha smell these humans and come back!"

"Ever had a human woman?" one of the other looters asked their leader, looming over the two women, a daughter and her mother even as the last two, an old man beaten to a pulp and his cowering son, lay cowering to the side in the shattered remains of their home. "Their flesh is supple, soft. They taste so good". Miranda at first thought he was referring to some sort of sexual deviation, but as she saw that the Batarian pulled heavy and blood-stained cleaver from his hip she realised that the looter meant something entirely different but certainly no less disturbing. "When you eat their skin you need no spice. The fear adds enough of it when you bite into their flesh-"

Shepard, growling all the while, had enough of listening idly by, and in a stark silence he gathered his biotics around his limbs and all but poured forth through that broken window, slamming into the two rear-most looters with terrifying speed, avoiding to use his firearms in close quarters as he didn't want to accidentally hit the innocent civilians the looters were extorting and intending on cannibalising. The first one died when he lashed out with an arm and punched straight through her unarmoured body, the second when his neck snapped under the weight of Shepard's iron grip. The third, the leader, had all but no time to raise his voice in a shout before Miranda, striking like a viper, rose from cover and shot him through the head even as Shepard charged the last looter. Him he attacked viciously – he struck its throat to crush its unprotected voice-box with his armoured fist before he wrenched the cleaver from its hand and slammed it twice into the looter's face, slicing all four of its eyes in half in a clearly ritualistic manner, before he ended it all with a single slice to the neck, Batarian blood splattering over his face in a red so dark it was almost black.

"Even most Batarians think the eating of other sentient beings nothing but barbarism" he spoke aloud to the room as he panted, the family before him stunned by the sudden burst of violence, the young doctor especially staring wide of eye at the corpses. "Are you alright?"

"You- you killed them!" the young doctor gasped even as the family, unrelated to him and all of them simply victims of circumstance, rose from their places on the floor, the mother helping her son and daughter to stand.

"Of course he did" the older man shot back at the doctor before he turned to their saviour. "I… thank you, good man! Without you… I hate to think what those disgusting aliens would have done to us!" Shepard held back a snarl at that, but the man went on regardless. "I… I need to pay you for this. A man's got to make his way… don't you see?" He was an old man, tired and wan and in threadbare clothes, but he was stubborn as well as prematurely white of hair, and Shepard could tell that this was the kind of man he least of all approved off.

"I'm not doing this for money, Mr" Shepard spoke back, but he was interrupted.

"Lawrence. Bill Lawrence – and I insist. My family" they came up behind him as if to lend him support, their seventeen years old son helping the medical aide, clearly the Daniel to which Mordin had been referring to before, to his feet. Miranda and Shepard both noted the young man's Omni-tool, active around his arm – it was scarlet red instead of the common orange, which was a rare thing in the civilian sector. It must have been a prised possession indeed. "We can't just let you save our lives without getting anything in return".

"Well, Mister Lawrence, I think you're being insane and an ass wanting to pay for what's freely given, but" Shepard shrugged while sighing "what the hoo-ha". He looked them over, not wanting to take anything that was of any real value, but if they insisted… "Hey, you" he said to the young man who was now crouching down with his scarlet Omni-tool by the side trying to get into connection with his friends. "What's your name?"

"J-Joshua, sir" the lad stammered out as the man in the dark armour towered over him, terrified by his mere presence and blood-splattered appearance.

"Your friends and family call you Josh, don't they?" Shepard wondered, to which the boy rapidly nodded. "Well, Josh, I'm Commander Shepard, and I'm your friend too. I'm gonna be helping your family and you out of here, and I would have done it for free if not for your father being an asshole. But I'm not going to take any money. You know why?" the young man quickly shook his head, to which Shepard smiled. "Because I can take all the money I need for my ship and crew off the bodies of dead mercs and looters. I do that because I'm not just friends with you and the Doctor – I'm friends with Archangel too. You've heard about Archangel, haven't you?"

"Yeah" he nodded back at the Commander, much more at ease at the mention to the hero of Omega's name. "I-I heard he was d-dead, sir. Is he-?"

"Very much alive, Josh" Shepard confirmed, sending a wave of relief washing over the young man's psyche. "He's an old friend of mine, actually. We go way back. Used to hunt Geth together. Thing is, he and I have sort of a style competition going on – and with him being a Turian and all his sense of fashion is nothing short of devastating. So let's make a deal, just you and me, Josh: I trade my boring orange military-grade Omni-tool for your snazzy red one so I can upstage Archangel just a little, and in return I take you and your family out of here. Got it? That sound like a fair deal to you, Josh?"

"S-sure, sir" he nodded through his dry throat, and the thought that occurred to the clever young man as he, in a sort of efficient rapidity he hadn't thought himself capable of, switched Omni-tools with the bulky Commander. "Sir" he asked slowly as they moved towards the door of their apartment, doctor Daniel and his family and that awesomely hot woman in tow. "Are you going to be taking Archangel away from Omega – to fight wars and stuff?"

And now he was feeling bad. Great. Here he was, storming through Omega and upsetting the balance of power so much that he might just as well have upended the figurative table the scales of power had been standing on and flung said scales into a wall. What right had he – no, thinking like that would take him nowhere. And the boy needed to believe in tomorrow just as much as anyone else, even if the hope was at best a hollow lie intended to soothe. "Archangel is leaving, Josh – but that doesn't mean he's gone. As long as people stand up and fight for what's right and what's dear to them were will always be angels, even in Omega". It was nothing but platitudes, of course, though the young man seemed to take what he said to heart.

"I hope you didn't have anything dangerous installed on that thing" Miranda commented later after they had left the family and the doctor's assistant back at the clinic and as they made their way back towards the environmental control section of the service ducts above the large habitation area they had just fought through.

"Uhm…" _Oh, dammit_ , he had forgotten about all the things Daniels and Donnelly had said that they had installed on the thing for him. He could hardly remember all of the things they said they had put into his Omni-tool, and now he had just handed it onto some random Omega kid. "No. Nope. Not at all, nothing of the sort". That kid would probably find something he wasn't supposed to and accidentally set fire to his sister. _Dammit_.

"Shepard…" she gave him a hard look as he, trying not to blush as he felt like an idiot, brought up the interface of his own new scarlet Omni-tool and checked through it as they made their way back to the apartments.

"Alright, I've accessed the settings. Just changing the username from to" he tapped into the machine as they made their way over the broken streets littered with Vorcha corpses and still burning debris "ShepardTFHS. Oh!" he noted as they passed into the Lawrence apartment and stepped over the dead Batarian looters they had come across before. "This thing's got an extranet uplink! Miranda, what's your username? I can set it to connect to your Omni-tool so that we can rely on extranet communication if something takes out our coms like the Blue Suns did back in Kima".

It was the same as she had it on most extranet accounts and even the rare dating site she had frequented during her time at Cerberus – she was working herself more or less to death and needed to let of steam, as it were – just to keep it simple. No need to make up several different accounts for unimportant and baseless things, though she had changed it a little when they began constructing the Normandy SR-2. "LawBringerSR2" she replied – and realised too late with whom she was dealing.

"LawBringer?" he snickered, and she gave him an icy glare that would have reduced most other people in the galaxy to a quivering jelly of fear quietly shitting itself on the floor. "Hah! That's so going to be your call sign once we get this show on the road!"

"You ass!" she cursed his way before she sighed in resignation as he all but cackled with glee. "Call sign?" she wondered with an arched eyebrow as they came in under the hatch up into the service tunnels. "We don't need military call signs. This isn't a military operation, Shepard-"

"The hell it isn't" he said as he jumped up and pulled himself up into the vents through that hatch, leading the way at least until they came up into the environmental support air cisterns and could stop crawling. "I'm military, and I'm running this crew, so yes, yes it is. I've already thought up ones for the others" he added to fill the silence as they made their way through the air ducts made unnaturally quiet by the turned off life-support. "Jacob can be 'Gunsmith', Zaeed can be 'Eclipse' or 'Blue Sun', Garrus can be 'Archangel', you'll be 'Lawbringer'… and Dr Solus can be 'Caffeine Hamster' or something".

"You've given this a lot of thought, haven't you?" Miranda wondered, to which Shepard chuckled.

"I can't be bothering the crew all the time, right? And working out by running around the ship and lifting weights with Taylor isn't the most stimulating thing in the world, is it? You get a lot more time than you'd like to think when you haven't got your library set up yet. We need a sparring ring, I say. And a shooting range!"

"I don't know about a shooting range, Shepard" Miranda thought on the matter and felt a little apprehensive as they crawled around a corner in the ducts, her view forwards obscured by a massive hunk of moving black armour… _in more sense than one_ , she thought and immediately gave herself a mental slap. "But we have room in the cargo bay if needed for a sparring mat and some punching bags. We could otherwise clear out the bar on the portside observation deck-"

"Ah!" Shepard wordlessly groaned as his jerked his head upwards in surprise and accidentally slammed his head into the top of the vents with a mighty metallic thud. "What?! We have a bar on the Normandy?! Why wasn't I told about this?!"

"Well, because you didn't ask" Miranda quipped back and shook her head at the man, who, grumbling all the while, kept on going ahead after turning his head and shooting her a dirty look. "Also, didn't you tour the ship? How come you didn't notice the bar? It's just down the hall from my office".

"I couldn't get into all of the rooms" he noted dourly. "Life Support, the observation decks, the cargo holds on the engineering deck, the AI core, the Science Lab on the main deck… there wasn't a lock-interface on any of those doors. I'm quite offended by that, actually. I could only get into the forward battery after Garrus reset the door from the inside. And you have an office?"

"It's not my fault that you haven't visited me there yet, Shepard" she sighed and shook her head as they finally came out of the ducts and rose under the blade of a great fan now still to take in the sights of the dark EC cistern. Why did she have to keep playing 'mother' and taking care of this man? "And perhaps it's just something faulty with EDI's programming. I'll see what I can do once we get back on the Normandy-" she took a single step forwards and slipped on a puddle of condensed moisture, falling uncontrollably towards the floor.

Moving with a quickness that belied his size and the weight of his armour Shepard dashed to her side and caught her, and instead of banging her head against the metal plates beneath them she looked up to find his deep and strangely green eyes staring back down at her. "Be careful, Miranda" he said in a low tone that was far from dark and menacing, instead almost warm and… more as his armoured arms held her so gently. "That's what happens when you wear high heels on a combat op. You might slip and fall".

"Some of us fall quicker than others" she told him, and she had little to no idea of what she meant by it. Was she rambling? Was this ass of a man making her ramble like some schoolgirl? _What the hell, Lawson? Pull yourself together!_ "Could you please let me stand, Shepard?"

"Oh! Yeah" he straightened her stance and stood back, giving her a curt nod in his suddenly flustered state. "We should, em, probably take care of that cure and Vorcha stuff. So" he looked around the cistern before he gave her a sheepish smile "which way is it?" With a sigh, moment utterly ruined, she pointed down one of the service tunnels after bringing up the radar map on her Omni-tool.

They walked in silence down that tunnel, Miranda wondering what the hell was going on between the two of them while Shepard internally cursed over the fact that being around Miranda was a lot more infuriating than it was being around Ashley had been. But by the end of that tunnel, as they came out into a great gallery beyond which lay central environmental control for the district, they mood changed to apprehension. The gallery beyond, open and vast as the tunnels of the undercroft intersected there in a great dome where the central fanning controls lay, was filled with Vorcha. Packed to the brim they milled, larvae and females as well as males, all but a few unarmed and moving about their lives until a singular shape in robes, backed by a guard of vicious looking thugs in blue and green rags, took his stance upon the centre ridge of the central control platform just before the environmental control consoles.

"We shut down machines!" he spoke with quite the booming voice for a Vorcha, and all in the great chamber turned their eyes to him in reverent jubilation. "Break fans!" He seemed to be what the Vorcha passed as a religious authority of some kind, and Shepard wondered as to the culture of these creatures before the Krogan had uplifted them so cruelly to serve as canon-fodder for the Blood Pack. "Everyone choke and die! Then Collectors make us strong!" Had these creatures been noble once, savages with honour until a cold and uncaring galaxy had stripped that honour away, leaving only bloodlust and primal rage?

"Alright" Shepard muttered after surveying the situation and shaking the idle sophistry from his mind, turning to Miranda with worry in his eyes. "There's a tonne of them… but most seem to be non-combatants. I say we go in hot, guns blazing, grenades and biotic explosions. That should scatter the most of them, leaving only the fighters for us to deal with. Then I go in with the Typhoon and Crusader and crack some skulls. Can you provide some suppressive fire from up here?" Thinking about it he unslung the sniper rifle, unused so far for this mission, from his back and made as if to hand it to Miranda. "Take this-"

"Shepard, please" she shook her head and turned away from him, looking out over the great gallery before them and lifting her pistol to aim it at the distant Vorcha prophet. "How far away do you think that leader of theirs is? A hundred and fifty yards? Two hundred?"

"At the very least" Shepard remarked hesitantly as he slung back his sniper rifle onto his back where it stuck with a faint click, pulling out the two grenades he had brought for this mission and manually setting them to explode on impact as his new Omni-tool lacked the military plug-in program to do it. "Two hundred and fifty yards, more like. A shot like that from a pistol is impossible to pull off-"

Miranda, coolly and coldly, sighted down the ridge of her own custom M-77 Paladin and gently pulled the trigger. A resounding bang shattered the stillness around them, and with a hole through the centre of his slotted brow the Vorcha prophet fell down dead, slumping dead to the floor like a marionette that had its strings cut. "Impossible, you say?" she wondered at him as chaos erupted down beneath them, smirking ever so slightly at a Commander Shepard who was momentarily stunned with awe.

"Damn, what a woman" he breathed far too low for her to hear before he forced his mind to attune to battle, making all other thoughts and worries fade away to leave on the objective before him. With no further words spoken he lobbed the two grenades in quick succession into the massed of the confused Vorcha crowd, hoping that he didn't hit any of them that could feasibly be viewed as civilians as the explosions shook the great gallery. Miranda kept laying in stray shots and biotic lifts and throws upon the more troublesome enemies down below, most of the Vorcha scurrying away into the pipes and tunnels like panicked rats, even as Shepard unslung his heavy assault rifle and leapt out of that service hatch they had been standing in a biotic blue haze.

The Biotic airdrop was a technique developed by Asari commandoes nearly two thousand years earlier, where the soldier wielding the biotic power would hurl themselves off of great heights and use their biotics to generate a pulling field around themselves upwards when they were nearing their destination, thus slowing their crashing descent into a gracious landing. Shepard, however, was of a different school of thought thanks mostly to Urdnot Wrex. Instead of slowing down his landing he speeded it up by gathering his barriers around him as much as he could, slamming into the ground with great force and letting the outermost layer of said barriers break and crash out and away from him, and as he did just that as he dropped from the service hatch, sending Vorcha flying and staggering away from his the site of his drop.

He did not shout anything akin to "Say hello to my little friend!" as he lifted his heavy rifle and began spewing death and machine-gun fire into the horde before him, the Vorcha quickly growing wise and falling back to hide behind what little cover that could be had. He did not, in fact, say anything. That would just have been tacky and more than a little disrespectful, he considered as he slowly advanced, relying on his armour and his barriers to deflect most of the shots sent his way by the unorganised Vorcha with the very poor firearms. Miranda cursed from above as she saw another large group of Vorcha, enraged at the sudden appearance of the human in black armour, attacking him from behind as he obliviously kept on his forward assault and didn't notice. If they reached him and got within melee range…

She dropped down out of the hatch and used the standard lifting technique to keep her descent from breaking her bones, lowering herself onto the battlefield and the unsuspecting Vorcha like an avenging angel. She managed to get off three shots before they were upon her, and used her biotics to slam away another five before the last got the better of her, leaping at her and slashing at her barriers with its claws. She tried to hold it off with one arm while brining to bear her other and her gun, but it was little use as the sinewy creature had in speed and ferocity many times what humans had over it in strength. Its claws raked at her arm and cut deep and bloody furrows in her skin through then shredded arm of her uniform, but if she just could –

A resounding bang blew that last Vorcha into the air, and suddenly a hand was upon her unharmed arm, helping her stand easily, shotgun smoking in the other hand as Shepard helped her up. "Thanks" he muttered back, completely sincere for her taking care of the ambushers from the rear for him, before she and he were forced to go back to keep killing Vorcha.

In the end they managed to do it, Miranda bleeding profusely and Shepard's armour dented and scratched by claw and gun, up onto the terrace where the control console lay, Shepard holding off the advancing tide of fang and claw with assault rifle fire even as Miranda laboured at the console with one arm, administering the cure into the vent air-borne nutrient injection system even as she booted up life-support systems for the district again. Shepard held them off until she could help him with barrier powers and throws, and then, as if all of the sudden and all the more shocking for the sudden shift in the world around them, the lights came back on from above to illuminate the red-tinged gloom, sending the last of the Vorcha scurrying away from them.

Panting the two sank down to the gore and grime-splattered floor, Shepard idly administering Omni-gel to Miranda's arm as they realised that they had come out of that crucible alive and together and that the district now beneath them would survive.

"I suppose we should get back to the doctor" Shepard spoke after perhaps twenty minutes spent in restful silence, looking over at Miranda with a sweated and bloody brow.

"I suppose we should" she answered him slowly in agreement, but still didn't rise. "You know, Commander" she said then, a slight and dazed smile coming onto her lips as the Medi-gel sapped the pain from her scratched arm. "We make a pretty good team".

"Yeah, I guess we do" he agreed in a tired drawl and raised his fist her way, palm pointing downwards and level with the floor. "Bro-fist?"

"No" she glared back at him.

* * *

The following seven days were hectic, and Shepard and Miranda barely had time to talk with each other at all. Mostly she and Jacob stayed at the Clinic while Shepard, Garrus and Zaeed swept the streets of Gozu district with a small squad of Aria's enforcers behind them backing them up, clearing out the remaining Vorcha and looter hideouts and eradicating the Blue Suns stronghold – as after the information that had come to light after the events at Kima district the Blue Suns had found their way onto Aria's shitlist; a very uncomfortable place to be, to say the least.

Meanwhile at the clinic Miranda and Jacob had to do little but stand and look intimidating to ward off any troublesome elements as Mordin fixed the mechs that had guarded the clinic and made sure that his impromptu apprentice, Dr Daniel Abrams whom Shepard had saved from certain death at Batarian hands, was ready to take up the flag he dropped when he left the clinic. They also worked on enhancing the clinic's defences – until Mordin figured that it was a lost cause and moved them to another location that situated on higher ground and thus more easily defended against attack. She had to admit that Dr Solus was brilliant scientist, though a little callous, just like her – they seemed to have a lot in common, but she preferred not the socialise too much with him. He was very erratic, on the precipice of unstable in her eyes, and she preferred the slower and more methodical approach. Salarians, the few she had come across, were always… twitchy.

Still, as she worked over the days, stories came back to her from the people coming in for treatments or from the Normandy crew that helped her and Jacob at the clinic about the deeds of the assault team. Shepard seemed to be as a saint by people who, among other things, claimed that he had used money forcefully taken from the Blue Suns' old headquarter to give a small group of Quarian mechanics and merchants their tickets off of Omega, or that he had punched a crazed Batarian prophet in the jaw after which he had proceeded to tear the mad preacher's teachings apart one by one by revealing the circular logic and contradictions within his reasoning to the crowd to which he had been preaching, forcing him to scurry away into the shadows. Others seemed to view him as a dangerous renegade element, citing his lack of affiliation to any mercenary group or gang and his unwillingness to compromise the safety of the civilian population in Omega by moving slower and more methodically than he otherwise could have. He denied any attempts by the gangs to recruit him, and always sent Miranda a message about each mercenary approach, instructing her to inform Aria. The blue big boss was, understandably, not happy.

All in all: they might have feared him or loved him, but all of them respected him. It was almost Machiavellian, Miranda thought after the week was finally over and she had washed the grime of Omega out of her hair and off her body as she sat down on the bed of her cabin. It would have been callous and an attempt to garner political power – had he had any drive at all to take the station over and rule it for himself, or if he had any intent at all to go against Aria. But no, he had wanted nothing but to get the Professor on his side and re-join the fight against the Collectors, who had been strangely inactive for the last two weeks after striking Freedom's Progress, and resigned to see his secondary mission through he wanted nothing more than to help. He seemed to have some empathy for the poor of Omega, and when Jacob or Garrus, both from affluent backgrounds, presumed to comment on the poverty of the people they were trying to help Shepard told them off in sharp terms.

Miranda sighed as she looked towards her computer terminal, thinking of how all of this would look in the report to the Illusive Man. The resources of the Lazarus Cell, the most expensive operation of the entire organisation, the most vital of all the initiatives they had ever undertaken, wasted on helping the downtrodden of Omega in what amounted to charity work. Well, to be fair, Aria had mentioned during her last talk with Miranda that she might be willing to pay Shepard and his crew handsomely if they so happened to "bomb the Fuck out of any Blue Suns' base he could find", but good will and good work were not one and the same – and definitely not one and the same in the robotic eyes of the Illusive Man. Still… this opened up a lot of opportunities and garnered some good will with Cerberus in the Terminus systems, and she could work with that.

It was later, when Miranda had dressed in her spare white cat suit, the other one discarded when she couldn't get the stink of Omega out of it, sitting at her terminal in the middle of writing her report to the Illusive Man, that Shepard walked into her office for the first time. He was looking down at his Omni-tool from time to time, narrowing green eyes at its scarlet data as he walked in through the door and stood before her desk, newly showered and clad in a pair of fatigue trousers, t-shirt and zipper-up hooded jacket that was practically ancient style and more than a lot out of fashion. "Something I can do for you, Commander?" she looked up from her report, expecting a quick answer but got none. "Shepard?"

"Yeah, you can uninstall whatever gunk Donnelly put on this thing" he grumbled and shook his Omni-tool-carrying arm, an expression of stark annoyance on his face as he looked up at her. "Seriously, it keeps asking me if I'm sure that I want to 'incinerate the target', and I've no idea how to shut it off".

"If it's just technical assistance you need-" she frowned, a little disappointed to her own great disgust for herself and her emotions.

"Oh, yeah, and me and the boys getting our drink on at the bar" he added and shook his head, his peeved expression replaced with a slightly more at-ease one and a boyish grin. "Donnelly and Daniels came too, as did Joker now that we're on course for the Hourglass Nebula and our crazy biotic sidekick. You in, Miranda?"

"I've got some reports-" she began to say before it struck her: she had never done anything like that before. She had never just taken a drink with the team to celebrate a work well done, and that one time years ago when she had champagne with Jacob it was just a part of her ploy to recruit him for Cerberus. But… she had work to do. Her allegiance lay with the Illusive Man, not with this paragon of warrior virtue, and she believed in what Cerberus stood for… didn't she? "I'm sorry, Shepard" she said, and as his face fell a little she felt a strange pang in the depths of her chest "I can't. Maybe some other time?"

"Hold that thought" he said then as he held up a single finger before stomping out of the room, returning mere minutes later with a bottle of honeyed Bekenstein whiskey in one hand and his private datapad in the other, slouching down in a chair he pulled up before her desk opposite to her and throwing his legs up onto another one. "Sweet office, by the way… though it could use a fish tank or a hamster or something".

"Shepard" she wondered, a little amused and much more baffled as he began to look through the extranet and synced his Omni-tool to his datapad, using it as a readier interface for the computer upon his arm. "What are you doing?"

"If you can't bring Mohammed to the mountain" he shrugged and took a sip of the sweet fiery liquor, his attention zipping from menu to menu as he toured the extranet. "You don't mind if I keep you company, do you? I hate drinking with those lightweights anyway, and I need to download some books up in this thing – to have something to do besides hazing Garrus and upstaging Jacob at weightlifting".

"No, I don't mind" she shook her head softly, knowing that he couldn't see her writing her report from the far side of the desk and so content to work alongside him in a peaceful setting for the first time, actually, to her own surprise, a little glad for his company. "What sort of books are you getting?" She usually wasn't the most… social of people, but somehow a distant part of her mind wasn't overly bothered by his presence.

" _The Art of War_ , _Commentaries on the Gallic War_ , the _Arthashastra_ , _The Art of War_ – the Machiavelli one, _Seven Pillars of Wisdom_ , _The Book of Five Rings_ , the _Epitoma Rei Militaris_ , the _Thirty-Six Stratagems_ …" he looked up at her after droning out the titles of the books he had downloaded so far to find her staring back at him with a calculating gaze. "What? You think I just pull these advanced tactics out of my ass? A good commander respects the victories of those who came before him and labours to avoid their mistakes".

"That was precisely what I thought that you did with your tactics – pulling them out of your arse" she quipped back as she hammered away at her keyboard without even looking at the monitor before her, knowing every single stroke of the keys by memory and instinct. "Given how much your tactics stink, that is".

"Ouch!" he flinched theatrically. "I'd best get myself over to the med-bay – because I just got burnt!" Despite his outraged words he chuckled and looked to her. "You know, it's good to hear you joke. Nice to know that there's a person underneath that Cerberus swimsuit". Before she could reprimand him with an icy glare he changed the subject. "So how does Cerberus really work, exactly? You always go around resurrecting dead people, or do you steal babies from cradles to become suicide bombers in the downtime?" With a sigh she set about correcting his misconceptions, hoping to perhaps get this done quickly so that she could finish her report.

They ended up talking for hours, long into the ship-side night. And somehow she didn't mind.

* * *

And Scene!

 **A/N:** What I'm striving for in this little piece of Fiction, among other things, is to expound on the gameplay aspects of Shepard's character and integrate them more into the dialogue and the actual story of Mass Effect. For example, if we look only at Vanguard M!Shep's abilities, skill-set and gear through the Mass Effect games, what can we tell about his character?

First and foremost: Shepard (who for the sake of simplicity in this argument is a _He_ in this little expose, even though Fem!Shep is in many ways more awesome) is the only one in his squad with medical abilities in ME and ME 3. He is also the only one that tots around heavy weapons in ME 2 and ME 3, and the only one that uses more than two firearms in his squad – indicating that he has had training in many types of weaponry, at least on a rudimentary level. Also, Shepard is the only one in all of the games with access to Advanced Training, where he can learn the signature moves of his squad mates. Shepard is also the only one with directly socially-affected skills in ME, ME 2 and ME 3, represented in gameplay as the Charm or Intimidate skills and the Paragon and Renegade interrupts. More specifically for Vanguard Shepard he is the only one in the entirety of the galaxy in ME 2 with the Biotic Charge ability.

What does all of this say about the character? How does gameplay inform his character? Let's set aside gameplay tweaks and the practical ideas of Bioware and talk about applied gameplay narrative and active storytelling.

Shepard is not just a highly trained and versatile soldier, with training in all manner of standard weaponry as well as heavy ordinance, but also intelligent and shrewd enough to be a combat-medic of sorts, indicating that he is highly intelligent as well as physically fit and powerful. Shepard is also very social, given his tendency to speak and move within his crew and squad on equal terms with them, and charismatic, given how he earns their loyalty and strives to learn from the people around him. A Paragon Shepard, who romanced Ashley in ME, is also quite possibly well-read as he quotes fairly obscure poetry, indicating a highly literate mind. Also, Vanguard Shepard is very much an aggressive fighter in ME 2 and ME 3, differing from ME where he didn't possess the Biotic Charge ability, indicating that he must have invented or learnt the technique in the intervening time – most likely from a member of his squad (my money's on Wrex rather than Kaidan or Liara).

That's my thoughts, anyway. Can you come up with anything better? Let me know in the comments and the reviews!

Until then: Read and Review, and DFTBA!


	5. Cerberus, The Convict and The Krogan

*Gasp!* A new chapter, already? How can this be?!

Well, I'm sort of a workaholic… and an insomniac. Sleep is just something other people have to worry about. Thanks again to my Beta neilin, who patiently suffers through my mostly rubbish ideas.

The theme song for this chapter is _1.000.000_ _Lightyears_ by Amaranthe. I just can't stop listening to the damn thing – probably one of my new favourite songs. Now onwards: to the chapter!

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Chapter 5: Cerberus, The Convict and The Krogan

* * *

"Commander Shepard is ashore" EDI's synthesised voice sounded in the intercom of the Normandy as the airlock of the ship opened and closed with a series of hisses, Miranda leaning against the CIC with her arms crossed before her. "XO Lawson has the deck". At the machine's announcement many members of the crew promptly turned towards Miranda and saluted – something that had been unthinkable in her days as director of the Lazarus cell – before they went back to their affairs and their own allotted tasks. This was Shepard's work, she grumbled internally as she went for the door to the armoury, her heels clicking against the metal deck of the main CIC deck of the Normandy SR-2. He was the one that kept saying "At ease", "copy that" and "sit-rep" to the members of the crew that were former Alliance military personnel, and slowly but surely their Cerberus habits were chipped away at until the soldiers of old emerged from the cocoons of para-military, cell-oriented terrorism.

A mere twenty days into the project, and already Miranda's authority was second to Shepard's. She didn't like it, not one bit, and now there were only a few members of the crew she could count on as being loyal to Cerberus and not Shepard left. Chambers, Patel, Rolston, Hawthorne, Hadley, Matthews – as far as Miranda could tell, those were the ones she could count on if Shepard went rouge and acted against the interests of Cerberus. Would they be enough to sabotage the ship and kill Shepard should that happen? Perhaps… Jacob could have been of great help, but Miranda had always been uncertain about the man. He was too emotionally invested in the Alliance, held on too tightly to his notions of Morality. He took to Shepard's charisma like a bee to honey, and he could no longer be relied on should the worst come to pass.

Not that it would, Miranda internally remarked as she made her way through the armoury and into the hallway to the communication's chamber, the table in the centre of the room lowering and integrating with the floor to form the rest of a holographic interface by which she could communicate with the Illusive Man. She had to admit that their operations, so far, had gone smoothly. Already they were garnering good will with the Terminus systems and recruiting several specialists for their squad. Shepard himself, as well as the ever trusty Vakarian, Massani and Taylor, had gone to recruit their newest addition at the prison ship Purgatory while professor Solus stayed behind and kept working on the Collector countermeasure and Miranda… well, Miranda had Cerberus business to attend to.

The interface rose around her and suddenly it was as if she was standing in the great glass viewing chamber of Cronos station, the office of the Illusive Man which she had visited quite a few times in the flesh, in attendance before the Illusive Man and the rest of the Cerberus council, a blazing, raging sun behind their illustrious leader as he waited for the meeting to commence. As Miranda surveyed the situation she could not help but think back to Shepard's questions about Cerberus asked six days earlier.

 _"Who are you? What is your leadership?"_ No one knew the Illusive Man's name, least of all the people who worked with him, and Miranda suspected at times that he himself had forgotten it long ago. His real name didn't matter: he was the Illusive Man, the leader and, perhaps, founder of Cerberus, the man with the resources and the conviction to drive their organisation forwards and the one with the clout and connections to hold the cells together. He worked out from Cronos station and directed the individual projects undertaken by Cerberus with the aid of the cell directors.

" _Besides the Illusive Man? Sarah Harkness has been with Cerberus since the beginning_ ". Miranda wasn't supposed to know what was going on in the other cells – that was their contingency plan, as each cell operated individually of each other and only coordinated in rare council meetings like that one – but she had heard things about the Overlord Cell that were… distressing, even to her ears. Sarah Harkness was even more void of scruples then the Illusive Man, if such a thing was possible, an iron woman with a former mercenary background who ruled her cell with an iron fist and absolute isolation, and she stood in the centre of the seven cell directors arranged before the Illusive Man. " _She's probably the closest we have to a secondary leader. She's getting old, but her expertise and insights can be… valuable_ ". She had neglected to mention to Shepard that the most likely advice the iron lady was to give was to glass the project from orbit with a Phalanx-laser bombardment and rebuild it from the ashes upwards.

" _Other than Harkness and the Illusive Man…? Rackham is our most brilliant mind and our chief scientific advisor_ ". Chao-Fei Rackham was more than brilliant – he was a highly functioning savant, and out of all the cell directors only Miranda herself could batter minds with him on an equal level. Beyond that he was utterly ruthless and cared nothing for the people under his command, viewing them more as interchangeable pieces of machinery and fuel for data and statistics than people. He ran the Phoenix Cell, their longest running project and cell meant to enhance the biotic potential of mankind, and despite his methods his ways had given great result.

To the right of Rackham and Harkness stood Toronaga, chief of the Vulcan Cell which Miranda knew virtually nothing concrete about, despite her spies in the other cells. The man had a cybernetic arm and a black face-obscuring visor before his features at all times, but his other sole outstanding feature was that he had a tendency to reach for a Buddhist rosary when speaking to the others during the council meetings, as if internally praying or asking for absolution for sins imagined. His cell was the one that was potentially the one most likely to drive humanity into a golden age, as his project was the one to steal or otherwise acquire advanced weaponry or other technology from the other races of the galaxy and retrofitting it and reverse-engineering it for human understanding and use.

And to the rightmost of Toronaga was Oleg Petrovsky, the General and chief military leader of Cerberus's armed forces, the Atlas Cell. A grim and determined man, he was a former Alliance Rear-Admiral who had grown disillusioned with the Alliance mission of getting along with the other races after the end of the First Contact war, and had served Cerberus faithfully ever since by leading its military division. " _Toronaga, Petrovsky and Fuller are the ones in charge of our main divisions: technology, military and espionage_ ". Miranda was sure that Shepard would have absolutely loathed the man should he ever had met him.

Emma Fuller, formerly Cara Thatcher, formerly Jessica Henderson, formerly Simon Chasten, formerly Therkil Haartbrandt, formerly Kimberly Jackson, stood to the right of Miranda and the left of Harkness, hands loosely clasped behind her back, her clothes non-descript and extremely common as opposed to the more ostentatious uniforms of the other cell directors. She was the one that coordinated the largest Cerberus initiative of them all, the Hecate Project, governing over nearly three dozen small cells all over the galaxy and council space. She was their answer to the Shadow Broker, and only by the grace of her absolute loyalty to the Illusive Man did she keep the information branch of Cerberus afloat. Miranda had worked for her before she had been given her own cell.

And last was the Doctor, known to his own cell as simply the Director, the leader of the Orcus cell over which he exerted intense and complete control. Miranda knew little about the man whose holographic image was to the left of her own, other than that he was polite to a fault, never removed his tinted shades and always spoke in a polite and sensible tone, a civil exterior hiding no doubt something truly vile. His base of operations was called the Barn, and his mission involved examining the biology of other council species – but beyond that Miranda knew nothing. Her spies had great difficulties in penetrating the security of his operations, but she was confident that they would succeed in the end.

Beyond the seven heads of Cerberus and the central intelligence that directed all of them there were two other people in the chamber with them: Jana, the Illusive Man's secretary and bodyguard, and _him_. Miranda herself hated the man, but most others simply regarded him with abject terror and distant, reproachful fear – the chief lieutenant of the Illusive Man and his personal assassin, his blade in the night: Kai Leng, the Viper. He stood by the Illusive Man's side as a shadow phantom, blade at his hip and visor before his eyes, smirking cruelly at Miranda. By the look she knew that he was giving her she had the strange desire to shoot the man right in his smug face – but that would have to wait. She had usurped his position as the most valuable operative of the Illusive Man, and she didn't doubt it for a second that one day the two of them would have to… resolve their difficulties. Preferably in a locked room filled with weapons out of which only one of them would emerge alive.

"Miss Lawson" the Illusive Man noted, smoking absently as he gave only a single look Miranda's way. "I am so glad that you could join us. Twenty days into the Lazarus project's second phase – how is Lazarus doing?" He swept his robotic eyes over the other leaders in attendance and curved his lips downwards ever so slightly. "Please do wait with your report to the council, Lawson. Mrs Harkness: how is Project Overlord proceeding? According to plan?"

"Well enough for the purposes of the council" came the rapid reply from the no-nonsense old woman. "There is nothing that neither you nor the other cells have to be concerned about. We have the resources to maintain both Overlord and the subsidiary projects Firestorm and Firewalker. The Overlord Cell have no needs at this juncture".

"Reliable as always" the Illusive Man noted with a nod. "You are to be commended for your consistency of performance, Mrs Harkness. General Petrovsky" he turned his eyes to the man in question "any updates worth mentioning?"

"The Atlas Cell is arming and preparing itself for war on the Collectors and the enemies of mankind, as per your orders" Oleg provided easily, his posture strict and militaristic all the while as he spoke. "Upon your order we will be ready to strike. The galaxy will behold the true might of Cerberus!"

"Your zeal is exemplary, General" the Illusive Man smiled slightly at him and thanked him with a nod. "Operative Fuller: any information applicable or helpful to the other cells?"

"I have some for Lazarus" she replied in a smooth yet utterly forgettable voice with a glance Miranda's way "but that information is already en route. Other than that: Oleg, there's a contingent of radical fundamentalist anti-Turians that I am keeping under surveillance on Elysium. I'll send the specs and coordinates your way – it's up to you to decide if you want to recruit them or not. That's all for me, boss".

"Thanky, Operative Fuller" the Illusive Man gestured at her and turned his eyes on Rackham. "Now, I hear that you have some… budgetary concerns regarding the funding of the Phoenix Cell. Please voice your concerns to the council, professor".

"You are putting too many resources into Lazarus, sir" the scientist spoke directly and to the point, Miranda narrowing her eyes dangerously at his holographic image. "And now that you are expanding on the efforts of the Vulcan-Orcus joint project-"

"How come you know about that?" Toronaga's emotionless voice drifted from his visor as he questioned his fellow cell director while the Doctor offered nothing but the slightest hint of a smile.

"I have people within your ranks, engineer" Rackham said that last word like it was disgusting to taste on his tongue. "Just as you have people within Project Phoenix. Illusive Man" he turned back to their leader "not only is this project endangering the loyalty of some of our… most illustrious operatives, but it also sucks much needed resources from the other cells. Project Domination-"

"Is the most important project we are undertaking right now – after the immediate concerns of Lazarus, of course" the Illusive Man spoke and shifted his gaze to Miranda. "And speaking of Lazarus – how is our Commander doing? Still loyal and hard at work, I hope?"

"Loyal to the Alliance, perhaps" she replied to him, knowing that all the other cell directors in the room were staring at her, judging her, looking for the slightest weakness in her operations or chink in her armour through which they could drive a dagger into her heart and take her lofty position for their own. "He shows no gratitude towards Cerberus for resurrecting him or giving him back his ship. Any good will he has… seems to be directed towards me personally". One would think that such an admission would be a weakness, what with showing a growing relationship between her and Shepard perhaps judged as a frailty, but the truth was that it only made her position stronger. If Shepard preferred working with her over others then her position as leader of Lazarus was strengthened.

"Can we stop sinking all of our cash into that sink, boss?" Fuller drawled from aside, crossing her arms over her stomach. "Lazarus is alive. The mission is underway. Now let him be useful and make his own way instead of leaching off our funds. Phoenix isn't the only Cell groaning under these impoverished conditions, boss".

"That is true – our resources, though considerable, are finite" the Illusive Man agreed before he turned back to Miranda. "Operative Lawson… since Lazarus is alive and the second phase of the project is well underway judging by your written reports, and the needs of Project Domination are… considerable, I find myself in the position of having to cut most of your extensive funding. Do you have any immediate expenses?"

"We still require top-of-the-line weapons and armour" she protested softly and shot a look at Toronaga's empty visor "but as long as the Vulcan Cell can provide us with such on a regular basis at no expense I suppose all is well. I had, however, intended to propose the establishment of a permanent field base in the Omega Nebula, as a safehouse for Lazarus or a secondary base-"

"Can Lazarus not provide you with any backing in this matter?" the Doctor questioned in a voice as slick as slime, to which Miranda shook her head.

"Shepard is a military officer, not an engineer. His specialties lies in destruction; not construction I'm afraid" Miranda informed him, but silenced immediately when Harkness cleared her gravelly voice pointedly.

"Use that, Operative Lawson" she suggested. "He is a soldier and a mercenary now – and there are plenty of people in the Terminus systems that need elimination. Someone is certain to offer gratuitous payment for the deaths of their rivals. I hear that Aria T'Loak of Omega is issuing a total war on the Blue Suns. She is bound to pay handsomely for their destruction".

"That is indeed an appetising suggestion, Mrs Harkness" the Illusive Man pondered, eyes still locked on Miranda. "I would say that this is an opportunity, Operative Lawson – Lazarus can actually provide us some direct monetary recompense for the resources we've spent upon bringing him back to life. Lazarus took down Saren the rouge Spectre and all but singlehandedly stopped the Geth invasion of Alliance space, so a few scattered mercenary encampments shouldn't pose any actual threat. The Collectors are silent for now, so seize this chance fully and intently". He took a deep inhalation from his cigarette and furrowed his brow slightly at her. "As for your request for a field base in the Omega Nebula – permission granted, but you must use your own resources in building it. Based on the quite extraordinary performance Lazarus has already demonstrated, all due to you, Operative Lawson, I'm granting your complete executive authority over the Lazarus Cell".

"This is absurd" Rackham snorted, but Miranda didn't care about the others or their jealousy in the slightest. Complete executive authority – she was essentially given free reins and a carte blanche on what directions the cell would be taking. As long as she provided the funding herself and reported to the Illusive Man every now and then she could do anything she wanted within the context of the cell – recruit more people, build bases, expand or change their focus and obligations, promote and hire operatives to whatever positions she saw fit, and more, so much more. Essentially all but the last vestigial pieces of red tape fell away from her grasp of the project – _her project_. Nothing could check or curb her authority anymore except for the Illusive Man himself. The things she could do with that kind of power…

Kai Leng looked for moment like he had gotten an entire bag of lemons forced down his throat, and the sight was even more satisfying than getting to assume direct control of her project. "It seems someone pays enough attention to recognise my genius" she looked to Rackham and gave him her best glare, sending him staggering backwards to the amusement of Fuller, the Doctor and Harkness. "If that was all? I have preparations to undertake".

"The meeting is adjourned" the Illusive Man agreed with a nod. "Carry on as you are, all of you. Our time is coming, and soon we will have to step out of the shadows and march to war. The galaxy will know us, and behold the Cerberus".

"Behold the Cerberus" all of them, even Kai Leng and Jana, repeated before the Illusive Man terminated the council meeting, the holographic interface around Miranda switching off and sliding down to leave her once more in the conference and communications room of the Normandy. As she stepped away from it her mind was racing with the possibilities that lay before her, but she kept her outward features full in check as she made her way through the CIC and to the elevator, retreating to her office on the crew deck of the Normandy.

Only when she was safely behind the door of her office and had engaged privacy mode did she allow her grin to show upon her face.

Oh… where to start, where to start? First of all – if she was going to make the best of this she needed information. Knowledge was power, and knowledge was the basis of all subterfuge - and all warfare was based on deception. If she was going to operate her cell in the Terminus systems then she needed to know the ins and outs of everything that went on there. She needed a network of her own, and contacts. Having never been prone to laziness she wiped the grin off her face and went to work.

She could use Fuller's network of spies on Ilium and Omega… though that woman would never share information with Miranda freely. So she contacted someone she had worked for before – a hacker named Lisa – asking if she maybe could get her a backdoor into Fuller's system, off the record of course. She would be compensated richly if she did, and if she kept her mouth shut about it. Lisa was, after all, the one she trusted to keep her own Lazarus project files safe from the snooping eyes of the other cell directors, lest a few pictures of Lisa in bed with an Asari find her way to her very affluent father who would, given his retrograde view of the galaxy, most likely disown her. After all… why use only the stick or the carrot when one could use both? What was the Krogan proverb again: _offer one hand but arm the other_?

Then she set about building her own network on Omega – she would have preferred Ilium, but they would have been expecting her to do that. If she was given full control of the cell she could do nearly anything, and so she decided that she would set up a base there on Omega, close under the protection of Aria, who now owed her a great deal and possibly even her crown. But where? Gozu district was tempting, given how out of the way and dank that place was, but human agents moving about the district in great numbers would attract a lot of attention from a not overly welcoming populous. The same was true about Kenzo district, though the large amount of guns in that district made it a much more tempting choice. The Fumi and Tuhi districts were too affluent, Doru too poor – no, the answer was Kima. And she had just the property in Kima district that could serve as her headquarters there. She promptly looked up the access tunnels and the schematics for the western edge of Kima district and wondered if one could widen the bulkheads at the edge of the district to lead to the old wharfs clinging to the outside of the station. One could even construct a hidden dock there without too much trouble, one connected via tunnels to Archangel's old safehouse.

She contacted a few of the people she had come across in Omega during her visit there with Shepard, chief among them Aria and Daniel, the doctor's aide that had been Mordin's second in command before he had been left responsible for the Gozu clinic proper. To Aria she extended an acceptance of her earlier offer to help her take down the Blue Suns in the Omega Nebula, to Daniel she offered her full economical support to the clinic… if he could keep her informed of their doings and the popular opinions around Omega. Purely so that she knew he and the clinic were safe, of course. And she carefully inquired about that Batarian Shepard had befriended. It never hurt to have some local muscle on your side, even if they were aliens. If Shepard worked with aliens so effectively, then why couldn't she?

She also called up Trina, her chief of personal on Minuteman Station, where the operations were in the process of being dismantled. She arranged with the woman, whose loyalty was ensured by Miranda's continued funding of her daughter's schooling, to take as many as the project's resources – the spare shipside fabricator, radar and scanning equipment, servers, a secondary AI-core, some rudimentary security mechs – and have it all loaded into a shuttle bound for Omega in greatest secrecy. Miranda would hack into the security network and the logs on that station to ensure that nothing seemed amiss to the new overseers of the next project on that station.

Having done all of it, and in the process of downloading logs and schematics from Aria's internal security system, Miranda leant back in her chair and took stock. She needed to draw up plans, see what more things she could direct from aboard the Normandy without having to go to Omega in person. The ire she had felt before over Shepard taking over her crew and project had evaporated. He and his squad, as well as the Normandy and its crew, were now not the full extent of her power but simply weapons in her arsenal, and she could use these weapons to fill up that arsenal with other options and more options for her to use. It was all to fight the Collectors – but she needed every card on hand that she could possibly have. And it all hinged on Shepard's support. "EDI" she spoke to the empty air of the office, breaking privacy mode. "Patch me into Commander Shepard's communications. I need to speak to the shore party".

"Certainly, Operative Lawson" the gentle and polite female voice supplied in all of its synthesised glory. "Warning" EDI said then, earning a scowl from Miranda. "Combat protocols initiated. Shore party is currently in active armed conflict. Connecting your office to the shore party's internal communications, Operative Lawson. Stand by".

"Oh, for the love of" Miranda growled and put her hand to her brow, palming her face in frustration. Why had she even expected anything else from Shepard? "Commander" she said as she could tell she was connected to his coms. It wasn't hard to tell given the sounds of periodic gunshots, screams and explosions transmitted into the air of her office. "Wasn't this supposed to be a simple transaction? Buy the convict and get off the ship – wasn't that how it was supposed to go?"

"Well, they thought I was more valuable than Jack and tried to sell me" Shepard replied in a testy tone even as his Crusader shotgun boomed as he fired death and destructions into the ranks of some mercenaries who really should have known better. "I have no intention of ending up as some Krogan's pleasure slave. I haven't extended the circumference of my rectum nearly enough to even consider it! So naturally there was some… civilised disagreement". Another shot rang out, followed by Garrus excitedly hooting "Scoped and dropped!"

"Just try not to get our recruit killed" Miranda sighed and rubbed her forehead. Ugh, he was giving her wrinkles, wasn't he? "We have a few… changes of policy in effect on this mission now, Shepard. I'm calling a staff meeting once you're done bringing carnage to the undeserving. Make sure that Jacob, doctor Solus and Vakarian are there with you".

"Got it!" he seemed to nod, followed by some heavy stomping, a mighty crash and then a gurgle from the dying thrashes of an unlucky Turian mercenary. "I think I need to change my loadout" he then said to her in an almost conversationalist tone. "With this brain trust at my back I don't need to go around with the Typhoon like I'm a caveman with a club. I think I'm ditching it when we get back to the ship. Hey, Zaeed! Would you like this thing?!"

"She's way too fat, you wanker!" Zaeed roared back over the coms. "Too fucking heavy! I like my girls slender and easy to handle!"

"Stop feminising your guns, you crazy human" Garrus complained loudly even as they fought, and Miranda heard Shepard sigh while Jacob assured the Turian that it certainly wasn't something all humans did – which Garrus already knew given how he had served aboard the previous iteration of the Normandy alongside quite a few humans, a fact he soundly informed Jacob, who, in Zaeed's words, felt like a "right fucking ninny".

"Shepard" Miranda spoke to him, surprised at how soft her voice was over him and his issues with the squad. "The Illusive Man is cutting our funding. If you find anything that could be useful to us in our mission, anything at all – guns, armour, provisions, medi-gel, supplies, credit-chits –"

"Steal it?" he wondered, to which she confirmed. "This is what the staff meeting is going to be about, isn't it? Ah, well, might as well take everything that isn't nailed down. We're killing them anyway, so I guess it isn't too morally bankrupt. Zaeed's been stealing all the chocolate aboard this ship anyway. We'll talk this over in greater detail once I'm back aboard the Normandy".

"Good" Miranda nodded even though he couldn't see it. "Lawson out". With that signal EDI cut their conversation short and leaving her once more alone in the office. Letting out a deep exhalation she wondered if she could count on him for all of this she was planning. Perhaps what she needed was to recruit her own people and team for her own undertakings… but when would she ever had the time or the resources needed? It was better to stay along with Shepard for now until an opportunity presented itself for her to truly shake up the way things ran in Cerberus. The Illusive Man kept saying that a war was coming, and the Cerberus needed to be ready to take on anything and everything the galaxy could throw at them. Right then, so soon after her promotion, she was inclined to agree with even more than she usually did.

Only two hours later she was confronted, however, with a woman that would turn the entirety of her world upon its head.

Jack, the one they had gone to Purgatory to recruit, had turned out to be nothing what she had expected. Violent, self-destructive, completely psychotic – yes, she was all of that, but that Miranda had expected. However she had not expected her to be a woman, for her reputation had a decidedly brutal and one would say decidedly masculine air of overcompensation about it. But a woman she was, violent and foul-mouth and covered from neck to heel in tattoos, often overlapping when there wasn't any space for the patterns to spread out, the hair on her head a shaved stubble in which geometric patterns had been cut, and she wore little else but a belt around her upper half in some idiotic fuckwit's idea of modesty combined with combat boots and cargo trousers as she sauntered onto the deck of the Normandy after Shepard and the boarding party, toting a shotgun and a pistol and absolutely radiating hatred for the insignia upon Miranda's uniform.

Jack was, according to the dossiers, one of the most, if not the most, powerful human biotic in existence. No, she was one of the most powerful biotics in history – period. Her powers were on par with those of the Krogan shamans of the ancient records and the oldest of living Asari matriarchs, and her willingness to use those powers shone through constantly in her every violence-prone actions. She was fierce, chaotic, undisciplined and compulsory rude and crude as well as completely unhinged and unpredictable.

Miranda absolutely hated her even at first glance. She was almost glad to know that the feeling was mutual.

"Welcome to the Normandy, Jack" Miranda said to the other woman as they stood in the communications and conference room together with an absent-minded and tired Shepard and a Yeoman Chambers who was trying desperately to merge into the wall in an act of terrified self-preservation. "I'm Miranda, Shepard's second-in-command". She was trying, despite her near reflexive dislike for the other woman, to be polite, though by her appearance she didn't trust her one bit and thus was intent on laying down some ground rules before this lunatic tore the Normandy apart. "On this ship we follow orders, so-"

"Tell the Cerberus cheerleader to back off, quarterback" Jack ignored her – _ignored her_! – and looked to Shepard over Miranda's shoulder as he was leaning against the wall a ways behind her with his arms crossed before him. "I'm here because of our deal".

"Miranda can let you into the system". _What?!_ She turned around in a whirr and levelled an arctic, positively katabactic, glare his way, wondering what the hell he had promised this psychopath to get her to join their suicidal crusade. "Jack said she wanted a look at our Cerberus database in exchange for joining us. Let me know what you find, Jack".

"Hear that, precious?" Jack spoke onto Miranda and stepped closer to her, gleefully smirking and moving as if to offer challenge. "We're going to be friends: you, me and every embarrassing little secret".

"I can't let you do that" Miranda informed her in no short terms and looked over to Shepard with an icy glare, staring back to the bald convict when the elfin woman's scarred features contorted in betrayed rage. "Not only would I not let scum like you into our system, but I do not possess the means to access the entire database-"

"Then you better get those fucking means, stat" Jack threatened immediately, interrupting Miranda – who did not, in the least, like to be interrupted. This woman was more infuriating that Shepard!

"I don't have access to any files that aren't part of discontinued projects or my own cell's database" Miranda tried to levelly explained, noting internally that she truly hadn't – not yet, anyway, not until her hackers came through. "That is how Cerberus works. Each cell is independent from the others and works-"

"Don't tell me how Cerberus works, cheerleader bitch!" Jack snapped and was suddenly far too close for Miranda's comfort, teeth bared in a wolfen growl that was as primal as it was savage and hungry for conflict and chaos. "Your fucking scientists raised me! I spent my first fucking years in a cell in one of your shit facilities!" Suddenly Jack grinned victoriously as she beheld Miranda's expression. "Seems you didn't know that, cheerleader. Seems you're not as important as you think you are".

"You better watch your bloody mouth!" Miranda snapped back, her biotics whirling around her as she clenched her fists tight so hard that her fingernails dug painfully into her palms. Jack seemed to return the favour, the smaller woman suddenly blazing blue in a terrifying haze as aeonian flames raged around her.

Before things could get violent and out of hand Shepard was there, stepping in between them like a referee at a boxing match and pushing them away from each other, steel in his gaze and iron in his arms. "Stop this" he rumbled "both of you! The Collectors are abducting thousands of colonists, destroying everything our species has achieved in the galaxy, and we're the only ones who can stop them. If we fight amongst ourselves thousands more will be lost. Check your privilege" he looked from Jack to her and then back to Jack. "And save your hate for them. You two keep a deck apart at all times: that's an order".

Jack stared back at Shepard until her rage seemed to fade into the background and a smile grew upon her elfin lips. "Huh. You're more of a boyscout than a quarterback, aren't you?" She turned and stomped towards the door, a slight swagger in her slender hips that Miranda noted for some reason unknown to even herself. "I'll be reading through your secrets down in the hold or somewhere near the bottom. I don't like a lot of through traffic". As she left the room she didn't even look back at them as she laid her final threat. "Keep your people off me. Better that way".

Miranda stood glaring after Jack for the longest time, her brilliant mind conjuring up close to nineteen thousand extremely visceral ways to make that psychotic woman forcefully shut up, and Shepard and Kelly, forgotten, stood awkwardly by the side until the Commander cleared his throat. "So… not the most stabilising element, then? She's pretty handy in a fight, though. She took down three heavy mechs on her way out of cryo all on her own. A freaking biotic goddess – that's what we have here".

"Commander" Chambers pointedly cleared her throat and stepped away from the bulkhead she had been hiding against.

"What is it, Kelly?" Shepard wondered at her, and Miranda wondered at that. Had he fraternised with her too? His degree of personal interaction with the rest of the crew was nothing short of astounding – but she supposed it was quite alright. Kelly, after all, was utterly loyal to Cerberus, and given her personal report with the Illusive Man she might have well be ordered to… get close to the Commander. Such an archaic thing to ask – it did infuriate Miranda, and more than it feasibly should have – but Chambers most likely wouldn't mind.

"May I offer my own professional opinion on the psychological state and makeup of our newest recruit?" she wondered, to which Shepard nodded. "I know she'll be solid under fire. Her tattoos are beautiful – as colourful as her past, I'm sure. But her attitude suggests deep… personal issues. She pushes people away, yet she more than likely approaches sex casually. I think that not even she understands her own motivations. I would not be surprised if she makes advances on you. If you want her respect think twice about accepting-"

"Whoa!" Shepard lifted his hands and urged her silence. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa – let's just wait a second here!" Miranda noted internally that it was a good move from Chamber's side: making the Commander dubious about the notion of pursuing a closer relationship with the anti-Cerberus hatemonger, thus pushing him out of the way from her influence upon his loyalties. "I'll do my best not to piss her off, and as for the sex stuff, pardon my French: she might be hot, but I'm not dumb enough to even try to get my groove on with her!" His mood changed, and he snuck a sideways glance at Miranda, who cocked her head to the side, before he looked back to Kelly. "Besides, she's not my type".

"Noted, Commander" Kelly nodded and headed for the door, giving Miranda long and meaningful look as she did. What was that about… and why was Kelly winking from the doorway when she left? Was she trying to tell Miranda something? She would have to have a long talk with that woman in regards to the new state of things and the new chain of command.

"Sorry about that" Shepard said then, as they stood alone, trying to calm down the obviously furious Miranda who was struggling to regain her normally so icy demeanour. "Well, I should have figured. LawBringer versus the incarnation of Chaos… I'm usually better at reading people than that. Must be the concussive blast I took to the head from that warden on the Purgatory-"

"It's irrelevant, Commander" she interrupted him firmly, trying to ignore the words that bald woman had spoken that were burrowing their way into the depths of her brain. _Seems you're not as important as you think you are_. She wondered when Lisa was done with constructing that backdoor into the Phoenix Cell's database – she had an extensive amount of research to do. "Summon the others here. We better have that staff meeting sooner rather than later".

Shepard did so, and had EDI promptly call up most of the important officers of his ship and crew. Garrus, in the aspect of being gunnery chief, was summoned, as was Jacob, armoury chief, and Mordin, chief science officer. He summoned Chakwas too, even though she, as medical officer, was under Mordin's technical authority, and engineer Gabriella Daniels, who would stand in for their eventual chief engineer, as well as Chambers, his Yeoman and assistant. Zaeed came too, for some reason, having been discussing past campaigns and glories with Garrus and wanting to come along to see what all the fuss was about, and all in all the lot of them arranged themselves around that great table, chatting amicably amongst themselves while Miranda stood in a grim silence to the side of it all, some small part of her wondering if what the bald woman had said had been true.

"Okay, people, here's the sit-rep" Shepard spoke severely from the head of the table once all of them had gathered, ushering silence. "Entire human colonies are disappearing, abducted in the thousands by the Collectors for unknown reasons. Little is known about the Collectors except that the way to their home world lies beyond the Omega 4 mass relay, from whence no ship has returned. Our mission is this: investigate these disappearances, find a way to take the fight to the Collectors, and ultimately go through the Omega 4 relay and get the abducted civilians back out of there. It's our one ship against the might of an entire species, on a quest to go where no one has ever come back alive from. I've been told it's a suicide mission" he settled back and gave a cocky half-grin to his people. "But I intend to prove that, and all of them, wrong. Ilos, Virmire, Elysium – I've beaten the odds before, and you can count on me doing so again".

"The Illusive Man put a lot of resources in the commencement of this project, as well as the recruitment of Mr Massani" Miranda went on and tried to cut to the chase. "Now he counts on us to bring in our own resources and fund our own actions. In short he has cut our main Cerberus funding – but in return he has given us complete freedom in how we proceed in this operation. Any targets we wish to pursue, anyone we wish to go against – we've been given an opportunity to reshape the Terminus systems, maybe even the galaxy. I would suggest starting by working to bring down the mercenary organisations around the Omega Nebula. Aria T'Loak of Omega has offered a great deal of credits if we help her in her war upon the Blood Pack, Eclipse and the Blue Suns".

"Never thought I'd see the day when I'd be doing mercenary work" Garrus grumbled dourly and supported his carapaced head on his clawed hand.

"What's so bad about mercenary work?" Zaeed protested from aside, Miranda shooting him a look as he was not part of their staff and thus had no business attending their meeting. "You get paid to do what you love, you know? Travel to exotic places and blow them up, meet exiting new people and kill them, work with great bunches of soldiers who you then dissolve in acid after you steal their share of the pay…"

"Yeah, it's all perks" Jacob shook his head at that and looked to Shepard. "Sir, I still think we should reach out to the Alliance. The Corsair program proved that they need people who can operate in the Terminus off the records and outside the books. They're bound to pay us for-"

"I'll put my feelers out, maybe try to get a hold of Admiral Hackett" came the reply on reflection. "But until then we need to earn our pay. Fuel and upgrades for this ship are expensive, and someone needs to fund Mordin's research. Luckily mercs more or less run the Terminus systems, so we can strike with impunity as long as Aria gives us the go-ahead. And it gives us the chance to iron out our tactics, get us all trained up for taking the fight beyond the Omega 4 relay. Miranda, how much money do we need to keep this operation afloat?"

"Lodging and provisions for the crew are provided on our expense aboard the Normandy" she spoke as she flipped through the open tabs on her datapad and brought out the relevant data. "Beyond that there is the issue of pay. Cerberus standard pay for missions like these are five hundred credits a week for personal expenses… and for any active squad members in the field there is, of course, the option to enact hazard pay".

"No" Shepard shook his head and earned some protesting grumbles from Jacob, whose private purchases relied on him having a layer of extensive padding in his bank account. "Our people are joining us for other reasons than credits. I won't cheapen their efforts by trying to buy their loyalty. Standard pay only, at least until we build up a cash surplus. How much is Aria offering?"

"Her latest offer is about eliminating the Blue Suns base on the planet Korlus" Miranda said and brought up her files on the matter of that scrapyard planet, as well as Aria's message regarding that planet and the kill-order she had enacted on it. "She offers fifty thousand credits, on the table, no questions asked, for the destruction of the base and the head – I've no idea if she's being figurative or not – of its leader, Jedore. However the world is a bit of a Blue Suns stronghold, and they have anti-aircraft artillery warding their perimeter making infiltration… difficult".

"Then haggle with her" Shepard urged his XO intently. "Get it up to eighty thousand if you can. Korlus has a lot of downed ships as far as I can remember, it being a junkyard world and all, so maybe we can pick up some heavy plating for the Normandy while there".

"You think that we need heavier armour for the ship, Commander?" Jacob inquired, to which he nodded back.

"I know this ship is state-of-the-art and top of the line, but if we're going to go through the Omega 4 relay I'm not about to take any chances. If this ship is all we've got I want it to be invincible when we take on the Collectors. Garrus – reach out to your old contacts in C-Sec, see if the Council or the Hierarchy are developing any cannons with real punching power. Mordin – that countermeasure needs to be functional ASAP, but if you have any ideas on how to increase the effectiveness of our weapons and armour you jump on that, got it? Jacob – make the rounds amongst the crew and the squad, make sure that they have what weapons they need. If they have any requests you get fabricating immediately. Also requisition whatever armour we need from Miranda's contacts. Chakwas – make sure the med-bay is up to stock and that we've got all the medical supplies we might feasibly need. Daniels – run through the Normandy's systems. I want to know everything we can do to optimise the combat performance of this vessel. Miranda – you handle our requisition orders and make sure we don't go over budget. Once the bargain with Aria goes through we head for Korlus, stat. That's all – if nobody has got any questions?" Silence reigned in the room after Shepard's long triade and no one raised their voice in protest. "Noted. We reconvene in seventy two hours for reports and updates. Dismissed".

"Ah" Garrus sighed in contentment as he stood away from the desk and followed Zaeed out the door along with the rest of the crew, leaving Shepard and Miranda alone in the communications room once again. "Military discipline. How I've missed it".

"Copy that" Jacob said the Turian's way while Zaeed muttered "Speak for your goddamned self" before the door slid shut behind them, cutting short any sounds in the room and leaving it in silence, Miranda and Shepard both still frowning as they leant over the surface of the long table in the centre of the room. "Are we doing the right thing?" Shepard looked up at her, asking, a query in his voice that was of great severity.

"Honestly, Shepard?" she wondered, to which he nodded. "The proverbial ball is in the Collectors' side of the court now. All we can do is make ourselves ready and prepare for the fight that is to come. As long as we have no way through the Omega 4 relay or the countermeasure for their swarms ready there is nothing proactive we can do".

"Yeah, I know… still, us running around and playing mercenaries while the colonies out there are in danger – even if the Collectors haven't attacked anyone since Freedom's Progress it still feels like a betrayal". He shook his head at it all and pinched the bridge of his nose, something he tended to do when frustrated. "What's the plan now, Miranda? You're in charge now, as I understand it – which means that I'm supposed to take my orders from you and you're supposed to take your orders from me. It's one clusterfuck of a ranking mess".

"How about this?" she began to suggest. "You have your mission directive, and you follow it. I offer direction and advice, but on the Normandy you run the show. I still report to the Illusive Man, you keep on distrusting Cerberus, and nothing needs to change. I just organise my own agenda via extranet uplink when I'm not with the shore party".

"That's the problem, isn't it?" he shook his head. "The chain of command ends with me, unless you or the Illusive Man tells me to go kick some Collector ass. I've never done that before. The closest I've ever come to running my own show was on Elysium or when I was chasing Saren – and even then there was the planetary governor in the first case and the council, Hackett and Anderson in the other. Who do I go to if I mess it up? If this all goes to hell, who can I count on to finish what we started?"

"There is no one" Miranda informed him, feeling almost cruel for cutting into his argument like that but knowing that she needed the Commander to have his head in the game and his instincts on sharp alert. "You might feel lost without the red tape, Shepard, without it telling you what's wrong and what's right. But it's not there anymore, and even if the security is gone it can't hold you back anymore. You're your own man now, Shepard. You're free".

"As long as the Reapers are still out there the war's not yet over" he spoke back at her in a dark tone. "Until this fight is won or I die I will never be free… but someone's got to fight this fight, and it might as well be me". He rumbled in frustration at himself and his own sophistic ways and stepped away from that table, looking apologetically at Miranda. "Sorry for laying this on you. I just need to vent sometimes, you know? I'll try not to make a habit out of it".

"No need to apologise" she shook her head as together they headed for the door to go back to their respective businesses. "My door is always open to you if you need to talk, Commander".

"Ah, I'll bother Garrus instead if I need to take a load off" he dismissed her offer, though she could tell that he appreciated it as they rounded the science lab and came out into the main area of the CIC deck. "But… I'm glad it was you I was stuck with. From your summery of the other Cerberus higher-ups I'm pretty sure that you are the least shitty option".

"I am going to take that as the compliment it was meant" she informed him as they stepped into the elevator to move downwards through the ship. "By the way, one of our possible recruits is on Korlus. I forgot to mention it earlier – a Krogan warlord named Okeer".

"Krogan, huh?" he wondered, his poor mood morphing slowly into a smirk. "Sounds perfect".

* * *

The mission to Korlus had been both a success and a failure – something Miranda had thought impossible. However she was quickly coming to learn that Shepard had the ability to muck even the most fool proof of plans up and still somehow come out on top.

He had gone to recruit a sniper for his team on Omega – and had nearly gotten that same sniper killed as well irrevocably upset the political balance of the entire Terminus sector.

He had stepped aboard a prison ship with the intent of retrieving a single biotic for his squad – only to later slaughter his way through prisoners and guards as the station security tried to capture him and sell him.

And now he had gone to Korlus to recruit a warlord – only to end up with the warlord dead, his lab and research destroyed and his valuable base bombed and gassed into oblivion. Only a single subject of the scientist Krogan remained and had been taken aboard the Normandy to… she wasn't sure if Shepard was going to let her transfer that comatose Krogan specimen to the Orcus cell for a healthy sum of credits from the Doctor or if he was actually going to wake the damn thing up and ask it to join them. At least the Blue Suns on that planet had been eradicated.

"Small mercies, I suppose" Miranda sighed by her terminal three days after they had set course for Korlus, noting with profound disinterest as Aria's payment went through to her Lazarus Cell shadow accounts, the full value being eighty one thousand two hundred and sixteen credits offered to them as a reward for a job well done along with the promise of additional payment if they kept levelling mercenary bases in the Terminus systems.

Miranda herself was immensely tired, having barely had time to take a shower and a snack to get up her energy after following along with Shepard, Mordin, Zaeed, Garrus, Jacob and that psychotic biotic Jack to the surface of Korlus. Not that she had been forced to do very much in that combat situation, as she had merely hung back and offered support to the others as they, with the help of some rouge Krogan experiments, tore the mercs to shreds. But Korlus had been swelteringly hot, smellier than Omega, and their trek through the spaceship graveyards of the Blue Suns base had been long and gruelling – not to mention that she had gotten acid all over her uniform when a Blue Suns tech-trooper had gotten past her defences for a second. She hadn't been hurt, but she was still quite peeved as she was down to her last good catsuit uniform. She supposed she could have EDI's fabricators in the armoury make her a new one – when Garrus wasn't hogging the damn foundry to make his highly specialised custom Turian rifle. Maybe she could take the opportunity and design the suit herself – something more formfitting, less modular with black reinforcement over the back and arms that was thicker than her original. Perhaps she should just strive to match her Commander and make it all black, with gold instead of red to symbolise her Cerberus-

A mighty crash shook the ship from beneath her, snapping her from her thoughts to leave her fully awake and furiously active. "EDI, status report – now!"

"Certainly, Operative Lawson" the machine replied and buffered for a few precious second before it answered. "Commander Shepard has awoken the Krogan specimen retrieved from the lab of warlord Okeer in the portside cargo hold directly beneath your office. Should I bring up the security camera feed to your personal terminal?"

"No – I'm going down there" she snapped back and zipped her catsuit all the way up, activating her kinetic shields and biotic barriers by connecting the shields module to the centre of her back and reaching for the gun in hidden compartment in her desk, one of several weapons she had hidden around her office and cabin. "Tell the Commander to hold on – I'll be down there momentarily".

Storming through the crew desk, past startled and frightened members of the crew and a bleary-eyed Garrus who had been busy painting in the few discrepancies in his facial markings that had been chipped away at by mercenary fire from their last mission, thinking them safe as they were in the middle of a blue-shit back to the Omega Nebula. She didn't tell him to grab a rifle or to come along – for he had done both already, and in silence the two of them descended through the ship via the elevator as another crash shook it. Once out of the locomotive box they found themselves side by side with a profusely cursing Zaeed who marched together with them to the portside cargo hold and slid the door open, guns held at the ready.

The two inside didn't seem to notice them, but Shepard was still alive to Miranda's immense relief, held and pressed against the wall of cargo hold bulkhead by the neck by lumbering beast that seemed to be two parts angry Krogan to one part human baby, judging by the orange gloss of its skin and the fragmented and not yet morphed-together state of its skullplate. "Not your name – mine" the Krogan spoke to something Shepard had said, its voice vaguely familiar to Miranda's ears. "I am trained, I know things" its face, its massive and teeth-filled maw were just inches away from Shepard's head "but the tank… Okeer couldn't impart connections. His words are hollow".

At least the creature was not as attached to Okeer as Miranda had feared, going by how it had been raised by a madman scientist with a near genocidal agenda against all other Krogan suffering from the genophage. Still, it was armoured, rabid, and _big_ – but Shepard, not taking his eyes away from the beast, held up one hand to the side as if to usher Garrus, Miranda and Zaeed to stand down. "Warlord, legacy, grunt…" the creature went on, stopping at that last word with a ponderous considerence. "Grunt. 'Grunt' was among the last. It has no meaning. It will do". It seemed to focus back on Shepard, bright baby-blue eyes as intent as they were rageful. "I am Grunt. If you are worthy of your command, prove your strength and try to destroy me".

"You wouldn't prefer 'Okeer' or Legacy?" Shepard wondered in calm curiosity as if he wasn't about to be crushed by a six and a half hundred pounds heavy Krogan, and Miranda had to give it to the man – he had one hell of a poker-face even as he silently pulled his N7 Eagle from his hip and pointed it to the Krogan's midsection without it noticing.

"It's short" came the rumbling answer. "Matches the training in my blood. The other words are big things I don't feel. Maybe they fit your mouth better. I feel nothing for Okeer's clan or his enemies. I will do what I was bred to do – fight and determine the strongest – but his imprint has failed. Without a reason that's mine one fight is as good as any other. Might as well start with you".

"I have a mighty ship and a strong crew, a strong clan" the Commander, still deadly and calm, informed the Krogan, giving the Normandy sale's pitch like only he could. "You'd make it stronger".

"If you are weak or chose weak enemies, I will have to kill you" the Krogan warned.

"Our enemies are the Collectors and entire armies' worth's of foes. They are worthy – no doubt about that" the Commander went on, smiling then.

"Hmm" the Krogan seemed to ponder it for a few long moments before it agreed with a hearty nod. "That's… acceptable. I'll fight for you, Commander Shepard". _Son of a_ … he actually did it. Miranda, Zaeed, Garrus – even Jack who had come along to see what all the noise was about, were stunned and in awe.

"I'm glad you saw reason" Shepard's smirk grew triumphant as he poked the Krogan's armour with the muzzle of his pistol, causing it to look down and chuckle, impressed.

"Ha!" It was amused and happy all at once as it released Shepard and backed away, Shepard holstering his pistol and rubbing his now aching but free neck. "Offer one hand but arm the other. Wise, Shepard. If I find a clan, if I find what I… I want, I'd be honoured to eventually pit them against you". Suddenly he looked up and aside to find the four people standing in the doorway to the cargo hold, their rifles, pistols and shotguns all drawn on him. "Humans, three of them, and a Turian. Okeer tried to make me hate all" the young Krogan remarked but didn't move, seemingly not as prone to the bloodrage as other members of his species. "Lucky for you he failed. Two of them are females of your species" he looked to Shepard in slight confusion. "Are they members of your harem? Okeer's training suggests that such is the proper place of a female aboard a warship, and they seem to dress for-"

"He's lucky he's an infant – otherwise I'd rip his fucking head off" Jack snarled and stomped away back into the undercrofts of the engineering deck where she had made her home, leaving only Miranda levelling an icy glare at the young Krogan who seemed to be taken aback.

"Grunt – meet some of my squad, my best warriors. Garrus, the Turian with the sniper rifle, is my brother in arms and has been for years. Zaeed is the older human, who has fought in more wars and battles than can be counted. And Miranda, the female, is the deadliest one of them all" he informed Grunt in no short terms. "Your training seems faulty in lots of places, Grunt. We'll have to go over this at a later point. Squad – meet Grunt. He's just been born, so he doesn't have a surname yet".

"You really do get all goddamned sorts, don't you Shepard?" Zaeed shook his head and left to resume throwing daggers at the image of his most hated rival and oldest foe like he had been before the waking of the Krogan interrupted him. Garrus left too, not wanting to be in the same room as an unstable and "pure" Krogan until Shepard had left a deeper mark on it given the history their two species had with each other, leaving Miranda still glaring at the young Krogan, who was starting to fidget under her icy gaze.

"Don't worry about it, Grunt" Shepard laid a hand on the massive brute's shoulder, and though he jerked at the contact he stilled with a shudder and the touch seemed to calm him down somewhat. "Her stare used to do that to me in the beginning too. Now it's actually pretty cute". Miranda's glare shifted recipient, making Shepard squirm just a bit despite his bravado. "Okay, Grunt – now you apologise to the pretty lady for being such a sexist".

"I-" Grunt looked to Shepard, a little outraged at the suggestion, before meeting the Commander's eyes and reluctantly hanging his head as he turned back to Miranda. "I'm sorry" he rumbled in a defeatist tone and scraped his armoured and clawed foot at the ground. "I won't suggest that you're Shepard's property ever again".

"Good – apology accepted" Miranda nodded Grunt's way and holstered her pistol to the hanger on her hip, narrowing her eyes at Shepard. "Please inform me the next time you do something like this, Commander. Do see me in my office after the staff meeting in two hours".

"Someone's going to get spanked" Grunt muttered after Miranda turned to leave, followed by a deep, drawling chuckle that somehow reminded her of Wilson, the scientist back on Lazarus Station that she had killed. "Heh heh heh - owie!" he protested as Shepard head-butted him to make sure that he stopped making stupid jokes at his expense.

"I told you to be careful" Miranda said onto Shepard later as they stood around the long metal, glass and plastic table in the communications and conference room on the Normandy's CIC deck, the burly Commander a little bruised from the earlier mission and much more bruised from playing and/or fighting with their newest recruit but in an upbeat mood even after the profoundly meaningless and tragic death of warlord Okeer. "I told you to be careful" she repeated sourly "but what do you do? You go ahead and open the tank and unleash a crazed Krogan on the ship like Captain bloody Krik".

"Who is this 'Captain Blood-Kirk'?" Garrus wondered aloud, but was given a blank shrug by Mordin and long looks from all the humans in the room, telling him to ask at a more opportune time when their XO and Commander weren't busy telling each other off. "Oh, well then… Shepard, how is the Krogan – Grunt? Any… indications that he wants to peel off my fringe and repurpose it as an ash-tray?"

"The massive baby Krogan fell asleep, tried after all the excitement" Shepard answered Garrus, causing a soft "Ahw" to come from doctor Chakwas, before he turned back to Miranda. "And what else was I supposed to do? Unless you haven't noticed our squad's sort of low on heavy hitters right now. Especially considering the tactics I have in mind for our collective military doctrine…" he drifted off and shook the mild concussion from his head, looking to the others. "Alright, everyone: report. Miranda, how are things on your end?"

"The funds are cleared, Commander" she informed him with a sigh. "Just an average day on the Normandy, I guess". And, indeed, it was.

* * *

And so we drop the curtain on tonight's performance. Actors, take a bow!

 **A/N:** _And so brave Shepard leapt inside  
with a face as dark as that of flying night  
Gleaming black flashed fiercely about his body  
and he had two guns in his hands  
None but a God could withstand him  
as he threw himself into that gateway  
and his eyes shone like fire!_

Ugh… I'm reading the Iliad again for school right now. It only strikes me now how much of an absolute cretin Agamemnon is made out to be. Perhaps the story was in need of an overt antagonist, and somewhere out there in the mists of time is a lost story were Agamemnon is made out to be the hero? We will, in all likelihood, never know.

Next mission is going to be a while, as studies are sort of getting in the way – but it's a doozy. Can you say arma-fucking-geddon? I'm sure you can J.

Read and Review, dear readers, and DFTBA!


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